Kwity Paye is not known as the most vocal person. His former youth and high school coaches describe him as “quiet” and “shy.”

But there’s one subject Michigan football's junior defensive end doesn’t hesitate to speak up about: his background.

Paye was born in Guinea as a refugee of the first Liberian civil war. His mother, Agnes Paye, fled Liberia and settled in Sierra Leone, where she gave birth to Paye’s older brother, Komotay Koffie. When the war spread to Sierra Leone, she fled to Guinea and gave birth to Kwity, whom she named after her father.

With two young children in an increasingly desperate situation, Agnes harbored one dream above all. She wanted a new life in the United States.

Two decades have passed since Agnes traveled across the world to give her two children a better life. The story of Paye’s family is a testament to the immigrant ethos — work hard, and your dreams can come true. Komotay is a defensive back at New Mexico State. Paye is a menacing defensive end at Michigan who leads the team in sacks and tackles for loss. Agnes leads a stable life back in Providence, Rhode Island.

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Yet they often have grappled with the thought of ‘what if?’ If Agnes hadn't become a citizen, she could have been forced to live again in an unfamiliar country, a place that only holds memories of war, violence and fear.

“One of my cousins, he got deported already,” Agnes said. “He didn’t have his citizenship. We were blessed, and we have our citizenship.”

To her, Liberia is "a strange land." And since March 31, because of the Trump administration's efforts to roll back protections for immigrants without permanent status, non-nationalized Liberian immigrants have been subject to deportation in wake of the expiration of the Deferred Enforced Departure program, which had allowed Liberian immigrants to live and work in the United States since 1999.

“I definitely sat there a couple times and told myself, ‘This could be me and Kwity. Our whole futures could be stopped right now,’ ” Komotay said. “Everything we dreamed of, all our dreams and aspirations, could be cut off right now.”

Paye may not be the most vocal person in the room. But he is starting to find his voice on this subject. He says he wants to use his platform, as a key contributor on one of the nation’s most recognizable college football teams, to speak out. And if he reaches the NFL, he’ll use that platform, too. Paye cites the example set by Colin Kaepernick, who protested police brutality against people of color by kneeling during the national anthem. That’s the type of advocate Paye hopes to become in regard to the ongoing discussion about immigration in the U.S.

“I would want to use my platform to help those people come here legally, so they won’t have to go through the fear of getting deported,” Paye said. “There will be times when people will come here and they won’t get their citizenship until they’re 60 or 50. I didn’t get that citizenship paper until I was a sophomore in high school. I feel there should be a better way to go about it, because it shouldn’t take that long.”

***

Liberia plunged into civil war in 1989, when the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, led by a man named Charles Taylor, began a conflict that lasted nearly a decade. Taylor, who studied economics in the United States and was active in the Liberian-American community, sought to overthrow the sitting government, led by President Samuel Doe. According to a U.S. Congressional Report, Doe — who had started his own violent coup in 1980 — led a regime which “had become infamous for its economic mismanagement and venality, brutality, and ethnic bias, primarily in favor of the Krahn and Mandingo ethnic groups.”

Agnes was a member of the Krahn ethnic group. Which meant she was a target for armed factions, especially as the war escalated. In 1990, Doe was captured and brutally executed. That same year, Agnes’ village was attacked and burned down. So she fled Liberia.

Many family members didn’t — and lost their lives. Her father, along with “most” of her family, died during the war, she said.

It’s still hard for Agnes to speak about those memories. “It was a difficult, difficult time for us,” she recalled. Her escape was an arduous journey. There were no cars, and Agnes couldn’t walk on the main road in fear of being detected by armed factions. She walked for miles through bushes and forest with her bare feet and little food.

“Even during that time, you don’t think about food,” Agnes said. “All you’re thinking about is how you’re going to survive. People were getting killed. Some peoples’ kids got lost. Babies got lost. People were dropping their kids along the roadside because they were not able to carry them along anymore.”

Eventually, she made it to Sierra Leone. There, she gave birth to Komotay. But the war soon followed them and other refugees. “In Sierra Leone, they were hunting Liberians down, too,” Agnes said. “We had to run away further to Guinea.”

That was where she gave birth to Kwity on Nov. 19, 1998.

At the time, Agnes says, “Guinea was facing their own difficulties.” That left her in a difficult spot. She couldn’t go back to Sierra Leone, and she certainly couldn’t return to Liberia.

The only option, really, was to start a new life somewhere new. Agnes’ plan: flee to the United States.

“It was the only dream we had,” she said. “It was the only place that seemed safe.”

A grandmother had already immigrated to America from Sierra Leone. So had an aunt named Helen Parker. The two settled down in Providence and tried sending for the rest of the family.

In May 1999, Agnes arrived in Rhode Island with her children. There was no looking back. “Once you leave, you can’t come back (to Liberia),” she said. “You come back, you get killed.”

***

Agnes, Komotay and Kwity settled down in an apartment complex on the south side of Providence. Agnes was grateful to be in the United States. But there were plenty of struggles in those early years. “Life was not easy,” she said, “coming to a strange place.”

At first, she found work in a group home, raising her two children on her own while studying to become a nursing assistant at the Community College of Rhode Island. Some days, she would bring her sons to class. During tests, they would sit outside and wait. "It was very hard on her,” Komotay said, “but she always found a way to make it work.”

It was difficult for Paye and his brother. They were bullied and teased, “just like any other kid coming from another country.” “They used to call us ‘African booty-scratchers,’ ” Komotay recalled. “Kids used to try to make us feel out of place.”

That changed once people began to notice the two brothers were athletically gifted. They dominated in sports. It helped them make friends and discover football, even though their mom didn’t want them to play because it is a violent sport. Eventually, she relented, and Paye joined the North End 49ers.

“He was a big kid," said Niazie Sabet, Paye's coach. "He was a very humble kid. Shy, humble.”

Agnes' decision to allow her children to play football illustrated how different their lives were. At times, things were hard and money was tight — but it was still nothing compared to what Agnes had gone through in Liberia.

“There really wasn’t much to do but to do things but survive — surviving was the only thing on her mind,” Paye said. “Here, in America, I didn’t have to think about surviving. All I thought about was having fun as a kid, playing outside, riding my bike with my friends, going to school, playing on the football team.”

***

In eighth grade, Paye took an entrance exam to two schools: Classical High School, just down the street from his home, and Bishop Hendricken High School, a prestigious — and expensive — Catholic school. Agnes sat her son down and told him the truth: “Kwity, I don’t think I can afford Hendricken. It’s too much money.”

Paye’s response: “If you send me to Hendricken, you won’t have to pay for college.”

He remembered those words every day of high school, when he’d wake up early, walk a mile to the bus stop and take a 40-minute ride to Hendricken. The promise sustained him through his freshman year, when he struggled academically and began to question whether he had made the right decision.

Soon, he began to see the fruits of his labor. His grades picked up. Athletically, he separated himself from the rest of the state. He started off as a safety and running back, but quickly found a new home.

"The first day in practice, I called him down and I asked him, ‘Do you want to be 15 yards away from the ball or 3 yards away from the ball?’ ” said Mike Green, Bishop Hendricken’s defensive coordinator. “He said he wanted to be closer to the ball, so he moved to defensive end."

By his senior year, Paye had numerous scholarship offers and was committed to Boston College. He was the No. 1-ranked player in the state, a big fish in a small pond, earning an invite to the prestigious Under Armour All-American game — a rarity for an athlete from a state as small as Rhode Island.

Then Michigan came calling, led by defensive coordinator Don Brown, who had previously coached at BC. Paye took an official visit for Michigan’s 14-7 win over Wisconsin in October 2016 and flipped his commitment soon after.

Months later, Paye gave a speech during his signing ceremony. He looked for his mom in the stands, eyes wet from tears, and said, “Mom, we finally made it.”

“I’m an immigrant," Paye said. "We came here with nothing. My mom sent me to a Catholic school that was half her wage. I see all the time, people put on Twitter, ‘My parents were immigrants, they came to this country with nothing and now I’m going to college with a free education.’

"These immigrants are working hard just to make sure that their family gets a better chance. That’s what my mom did. She made sure that me and my older brother would have a better chance at life and make something of ourselves."

***

When Paye signed with the Wolverines, he promised his mom that, very soon, she wouldn't "have to lift a finger again." That promise is only part of the burden that Paye bears at Michigan. Agnes has told both Paye and Komotay that Liberian friends and family back in Providence are watching every step of their journey.

They tell their children,"Look at what Kwity and Komotay are doing."

“He is a big presence,” Green said. “Just knowing that culture, they’re looking for a hero. Just witnessing how proud they are of their young men, I think Kwity could take up that mantle as a spokesperson for his community.

“And it seems as though he would be welcomed. He’d excel in that. He’s someone that the community really looks up to.”

It may seem like a lot of pressure. But Paye doesn’t think of it that way. He draws strength and inspiration from his community. He says he has been under pressure all his life, pointing to his eighth-grade promise of earning a full scholarship.

If anything, Paye has learned to welcome responsibility. This offseason, Jim Harbaugh and Brown came to Paye multiple times with the same message: We need you to speak up.

“They were saying that when I talk, people listen, because I don’t really need to say a lot and I’m always on the right thing,” Paye said. “When I speak to the younger guys, they’ll listen. They’ll follow by my actions.”

He’s now considered a veteran leader of Michigan’s defense, a key cog who had 2.5 sacks in the Wolverines' 10-3 win over Iowa on Saturday.

Off the field, Paye still is finding his voice. He hopes to become an advocate for the Liberian community on the issue of deportation “because those are my people,” but feels he’s not educated enough on the subject to do so right now.

Instead, it’s easier for Paye to visualize what he would do if he reaches the NFL.

“My dream has always been to go back to Liberia and give them the opportunity that we have here,” Paye said. “Try and help build schools over there, try and build hospitals, try to create jobs."

Paye never has been to Liberia. He never met his father, who still lives there , nor his grandmother, whom his mother has tried — and failed — to bring to America.

Paye doesn't give much thought to what his life would've been like in Liberia. And yet his homeland is entrenched in his identity. He proudly displays the Liberian flag in the biographies of his social media accounts. Occasionally, Paye gives his mom some of his clothing and shoes to send back home.

Kwity Paye is over 5,000 miles away from Liberia. But he couldn't feel any closer to his roots.

“I feel like God put me in this position to help those people (in Liberia),” Paye said. “God wouldn’t have brought me this far if it wasn’t for me going back to help my people.”

Contact Orion Sang at osang@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @orion_sang. Read more on the Michigan Wolverines and sign up for our Wolverines newsletter.