Rafael Rivas built his whole life in the United States. He went to school and worked as a computer network administrator in California, where he lived for twenty-nine years. But in 2013, Rafael was deported to El Salvador, the country his family had abandoned in the midst of a civil war when he was still a child.

“Sometimes, it’s lonely,” he admits. “Especially around the holidays.”

Rafael was one of more than 3 million people deported during the Obama administration, torn from his mother, his children, and his entire extended family. Joe Biden staked his presidential campaign on reversing Donald Trump’s notorious anti-migrant policies, emphasizing the horrors of family separation. But for all the talk of keeping families together, the administration’s immigration agenda has so far excluded the vast and growing population of people deported from the United States — millions of whom were torn from the arms of their loved ones under Barack Obama’s presidency and Biden’s vice presidency.