When Laymone Khambounleung was deported to Laos last August, his mother’s relatives met him at a holding facility. He did not know what they looked like.

It was one of many unknowns Mr. Khambounleung faced when he was removed from the United States, the only country he had really known, over convictions including burglary and threatening a family member.

Now, he is learning to navigate daily life in a country he left four decades ago as a baby. Mr. Khambounleung, who grew up in Louisiana, can speak Lao, but he cannot read or write in the language. He has befriended other men who, like him, left the country as children and assimilated in the United States.

And like deportees across Latin America, Africa and elsewhere in Asia, he is sharing glimpses of his life on social media, hoping to raise awareness about the challenges and opportunities people face when they are removed to unfamiliar home countries, or third countries to which they have no ties. For some, their online posts also provide an income.

In Mr. Khambounleung’s videos, his reactions to sights in Laos, narrated in his Louisiana accent, have attracted millions of views.

“It’s all new to me too,” Mr. Khambounleung, 41, said in an interview. “I wanted to let the whole world see the Lao culture also, experience it with me while I’m experiencing it.”

Between President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and the end of July, about 980,000 people were deported by the Department of Homeland Security, according to an analysis by Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. While most were intercepted at the border, a substantial number were immigrants residing in the country.

Through their videos on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, the lives of people who dwelled in the United States for a long time are told in new post-American chapters. Viewers on social media are offered a unique window into what comes after deportation upends a life.

‘You Don’t Really Fit Into Anywhere’

Being deported for some people means returning to a country of which they have little memory.

Mr. Khambounleung was 3 when his family, refugees from Laos, arrived in New Iberia, La., he said. After a burglary conviction, a judge in 2007 ordered his removal from the United States.

With Laos then accepting few deportees, Mr. Khambounleung stayed on supervised release, and was convicted of additional crimes, including robbery and threatening a family member. He was working as a pipe welder in Texas when Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him last year, he said.

“Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, noting Mr. Khambounleung’s criminal record.

He moved in with an aunt and uncle outside Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

“If it wasn’t for them, man, I don’t know what I’d do out here,” he said. “I’d be lost.”