Nascimento Blair returned home in shackles.

He landed in Jamaica in February, 21 years after he had abandoned the island, seated next to dozens of his countrymen who were also handcuffed. As he stepped off the plane at the seaside airport in Kingston and felt the scorching Caribbean sun of his youth, Mr. Blair, 46, was greeted with suspicion.

Still dazed, he looked out of place. He had on the same winter clothes — a peacoat, turtleneck, gray suit and Chelsea boots — he had been wearing when U.S. immigration authorities had abruptly detained him on a frigid morning in New York City weeks earlier.

He noticed his slightly Americanized accent as he sat through hours of interrogation by Jamaican authorities at the airport. And he felt like an outcast as Jamaican officials snapped his mug shot, took his fingerprints and asked about his past.

“They don’t look at you like a Jamaican,” Mr. Blair said. “They look at you like a criminal.”

Mr. Blair did not give them details about his past, an odyssey that began with a side hustle dealing marijuana in the New York suburbs as a 24-year-old Jamaican transplant, which led to a kidnapping conviction he disputed and a 15-year prison sentence he fulfilled.

It was his criminal past that had gotten him deported from the United States, where he had been rebuilding his life and seeking redemption. He had earned two college degrees, started a trucking business, mentored people released from prison, cared for a fiancée with breast cancer, taken classes at Columbia University.

None of it would stave off deportation: He was among the first few thousand immigrants scattered across the globe during the early days of President Trump’s deportation campaign.