At around 2 a.m. earlier this month, Prince Peters was awakened inside the California City immigration detention facility with unexpected words: he was leaving.

“They came to my cell at two o’clock in the morning and just told me, ‘You’re leaving,’” Peters said. 

After nearly six years in immigration detention across roughly 14 facilities nationwide, the news did not immediately feel real. He waited for hours before anything else happened.

“I sat there for like two hours,” he said. “Then they took me down.”

What followed was not a clean exit into freedom, but a slow and disorienting process. During processing, Peters said officers could not locate his belongings.

“They lose my clothes,” he said. “They say if they don’t get it, I just got to wear somebody clothes.”

He was eventually given replacement clothing items that belonged to someone else.

By early morning, Peters and about a dozen other detainees were loaded onto a bus and transported to Bakersfield. They were dropped off at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Bakersfield, where more paperwork followed.

After signing release paperwork, which he said came only after legal efforts, including filing habeas corpus petitions, Peters said he was finally told he could leave.

“They said, sign the paperwork,” he said. “Then they said, there’s the door.”

From there, he and others made their way to the nearby Amtrak station. Volunteers met them there with phones and helped arrange travel. 

For Peters, the moment marked the end of a detention journey that began in February 2020 and stretched across a system that moved him repeatedly, never allowing him to settle in one place.

“You don’t know when you leaving,” he said. “You just stuck.”

He was first detained in Pittsburgh after reporting for a probation check-in. From there, he was transferred through facilities in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and California.

Over time, he said, the pattern became predictable: just when he began adjusting, he would be moved again.

“Anytime I am there for like six, seven months, then they transfer me,” he said.

The constant movement, Peters said, made stability impossible and blurred the passage of time.

Among them, he said, California City stood out as the most difficult.

“California City is the worst,” Peters said. “This is the worst I ever went to since the 14 facilities.”

He said conditions that included poor food and inconsistent water access.

“The food not good. The water you drink is not good,” he said.

At times, he said, detainees went without reliable cold water for extended periods.

“We been taking cold water for a whole week,” Peters said. “Then they fix the cold water, then it make it hot water, very, very hot. It burn your skin.”

He also said some detainees reported health issues tied to conditions inside the facility.

“Some people drink the water, they got their stomach hurt,” he said. “Some people take shower, they get rashes on their skin.”

Access to medical care, he added, could be delayed.

“Sometimes you order your medication, it take like 14 days,” Peters said. “You supposed to take your medication every day.”

Still, with the instability and uncertainty, Peters said detainees often formed close bonds.

“We like family,” he said. “We don’t got nobody, so we got each other.”

After years inside the system, even basic moments outside detention now feel new again.

At the Amtrak station in Bakersfield, volunteers helped him and others transition out. Offering phones, information and assistance with travel plans. For Peters, it was one of the first moments of assistance he had received in years without restrictions attached.

He spent roughly six years in detention in total. Now 39, he is beginning to rebuild a life that was repeatedly interrupted.

“I’m 39 right now,” he said. “Six years from now, I’m going to buy me a house in Atlanta, Georgia.”

Peters is a refugee from Liberia who was granted asylum in the United States after fleeing civil war as a child. At age 4, he witnessed his parents being killed during Liberia’s civil war. He fled with his adoptive mother to Côte d’Ivoire before eventually resettling in the United States as a teenager.

He later lived in New Jersey and moved to Pittsburgh, where he worked in a warehouse before his arrest in 2020.

“I miss my family. I miss working. I miss people around me,” Peters said. “I miss everything.”

Since his release, even small acts of normalcy carry weight. His first meal outside detention underscored that shift.

“I ain’t cook for a long time,” he said. “The food tastes good. Definitely tastes better.”

For now, Peters is focused on rebuilding stability after years of uncertainty. But he also says he wants to use what he lived through to support others still inside the system.

“People help me,” he said. “So I got to help other people too.”