As the ghostwriter of "My Deportation," I spent more than six months between 2015 and 2016 interviewing Javier Valadez, a DREAMER and Austin-based magazine editor who was deported by ICE to Mexico in late 2015. Javier was a victim of the Obama administration's mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants with criminal records, despite having lived in the U.S. since the age of 12. Javier and I corresponded via hundreds of emails to craft this timely exploration of deportation from the eyes of a man who believed himself to be a U.S. citizen. Our story became the lead feature of Playboy's first non-nude issue, in March 2016, and won the 2016 Folio Award for Best Article in a Men's Magazine.