‘We Have Not Heard From My Brother': The Missing Bhutanese Deportees

New York Times

01-05-2025

The news of deportations arrived as a trickle. A member of the Bhutanese community in Texas was taken away. Another picked up in Idaho. Then, one in Georgia.
'People started calling us in a panic to let us know ICE arrests have started,' said Robin Gurung, a community leader in Harrisburg, Pa., a major center of life for Bhutanese refugees in America.
Given the limited information from immigration officials and a cultural reluctance within the Bhutanese community to discuss the loss of loved ones, Mr. Gurung could only estimate the number of people detained and deported from his area and the rest of the state.
'At least 12 from here,' he said during a recent interview at a dumpling house near the Pennsylvania State Capitol. He paused, emphasizing the uncertainty, before continuing. A dozen 'that we know of.'
As the Trump administration accelerated its controversial deportation program, primarily targeting undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America, confusion became a common theme. What is happening in the community from Bhutan, a sliver of a country near India and Nepal, has a similar opaque uncertainty, and its own set of vexing circumstances.
The Bhutanese who have been caught in this dragnet since March are not undocumented, but they all reportedly have criminal records with offenses that range from driving under the influence to felony assault. They are refugees who arrived legally in the United States through a humanitarian program initiated under former President George W. Bush. Beginning around 2007, the United States offered shelter to tens of thousands of mostly Nepali-speaking, Bhutanese Hindus who had fled ethnic cleansing in the kingdom of Bhutan, which is predominantly Buddhist.
Information from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the recent deportations has been sparse. The lack of transparency has left community leaders, politicians and grieving families in Harrisburg and the surrounding Central Pennsylvania region — which has taken in some 40,000 Bhutanese refugees over two decades — grappling for answers and consumed by fear.
'The community was not prepared for this,' said Mr. Gurung, a co-executive director of the local nonprofit Asian Refugees United. 'We came though the formal refugee resettlement program, which means the U.S. government, they agreed to bring us to this country. The understanding was the government, they're not going to come after us.'
Precise nationwide figures remain difficult to confirm because of the lack of information from the federal government. But it is believed that as many as 60 Bhutanese refugees have been detained in immigration facilities, and at least two dozen have been deported, initially to Bhutan.
From there, the situation becomes even more opaque.
Advocates argue that the deported men, many of whom had served probation or time in prison and had been permitted to remain in the United States on work permits, were denied a proper opportunity to appeal their deportation orders or argue against being sent back to a country they or their families fled in fear.
These deportees are stateless. Although they resided legally in the United States, none had attained full citizenship. Bhutan does not recognize them as citizens, nor does Nepal, where many were born and raised in refugee camps. Upon arriving in Bhutan, they were quickly turned away. Advocates said they weren't surprised that the men were then sent 'ping-ponging' between India and Nepal.
Many families in the United States report that their deported loved ones are either in hiding or in unknown locations.
'We have not heard from my brother,' said Devi Gurung, whose brother, Ashok Gurung, was deported. 'For all we know, he could be dead.'
'The United States is sending people to countries where they have no citizenship, no right to be,' said Craig Shagin, a lawyer in Harrisburg, who is representing a deportee named Indra. He asked that his client's surname name be withheld out of concerns for his safety.
Mr. Shagin's client was convicted of driving while intoxicated on two occasions. The second conviction, in 2018, included a charge for evading the police. A judge deemed it a crime of moral turpitude, an offense that could make him subject to deportation.
But Pennsylvania courts vacated and dismissed the evasion charge, Mr. Shagin said. He added that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, covering Pennsylvania, has since ruled that evading arrest during a D.W.I. stop is not a deportable offense. Despite Mr. Shagin's efforts to meet his client in custody, immigration officials delayed the meeting a week, rejected an emergency stay and deported him.
Most of the Bhutanese who immigrated to America are historically from the south of Bhutan, and have deeper ancestral ties to Nepal and India than to Bhutan's Buddhist majority. In the early 1990s, the Bhutanese government began a campaign to forge a single national identity. Many residents from the south were reclassified as illegal immigrants. Dress codes were enforced, and teaching Nepali in schools was banned. Facing violent crackdowns, over 100,000 people fled to refugee camps in Nepal.
The international community eventually intervened. Starting in 2007, a majority resettled in Europe and in countries including Canada, Australia, and the United States. Pennsylvania, particularly the Harrisburg area with its rolling hills reminiscent of Bhutan, became a primary destination.
Today, the Bhutanese community in the Harrisburg area is spread across neighborhoods and townships. South Asian groceries and spices fill strip mall shops. Incense fills a former cinder-block school repurposed as a Hindu temple. The aroma of curry and steamed dumplings draws people to Mom's Momo and Deli, a local favorite that features exhibits on life in refugee camps and Nepal.
'People came to Harrisburg because the land reminds them of home and for the support system created here,' Mr. Gurung said, picking at noodles in the restaurant. This system includes access to jobs in nursing homes and the region's numerous warehouses.
'Many residents found their way here even after starting lives elsewhere in America,' Mr. Gurung noted. At 36, he is one such example, having lived most of his life in a refugee camp before passing his citizenship test in San Francisco and living in Oakland, Calif., for years. Drawn by the growing community, he moved to Harrisburg in 2020, during the pandemic.
The deportations had triggered a pervading fear, Mr. Gurung said. Even naturalized citizens worry the crackdown could extend to them. People now carry documentation everywhere to prove their identity and legal status. Many elderly Bhutanese are re-traumatized as their family members disappear, he said, their memories jolted back to the repression and disappearances in Bhutan. 'This is opening the old wounds again,' Mr. Gurung said. 'It is a form of widespread PTSD.'
In this community, mention of President Trump elicits shudders, frowns or blank stares. Shop owners, cooks and students are hesitant to speak to reporters or provide their names, fearing repercussions should they appear in print.
'Anxiety is something you can feel everywhere now,' said one Bhutanese Uber driver, who asked for anonymity out of fear. Even though he's a U.S. citizen, his wife is afraid for him to leave home without proof that he belongs in the country, and insists he carry documentation. He is not alone.
'Will Trump come for people who have done nothing wrong, who are not green card holders but actual citizens?' the driver asked. 'Nobody seems to know what is happening.'
The initial group of deportees was flown from the United States to India, landing briefly in New Delhi, according to Gopal Siwakoti, a human-rights activist in Kathmandu who is tracking the situation. Indian authorities then sent them to Bhutan. Mr. Siwakoti said that Bhutanese officials interrogated the men, confiscated their identifications, provided them with roughly $300 and arranged taxis to drive them out of Bhutan to the Indian border with Nepal.
From there, at least four men took a smuggler's route into Nepal, where about 1,000 Bhutanese people still live in refugee camps. Mr. Siwakoti confirmed these four men were arrested in Nepal and remain there.
Of the remaining deportees, most are in hiding, have limited contact with family or are unaccounted for.
Mr. Shagin's client is now somewhere in India, according to the client's brother, who requested anonymity because of concerns for his safety. 'My brother has no family in India, no connections there,' the brother said. 'What will be his future? I worry about suicide.'
The exact whereabouts of another deportee, Ashok Gurung, are also unknown, his sister, Devi Gurung, said in a recent interview. She has not heard from him since ICE agents arrested him one morning in March. 'For all I know, he might be dead,' Ms. Gurung said through an interpreter.
She spoke openly about her brother's past, including his criminal history. Mr. Gurung was born and raised in Nepalese refugee camps before arriving in the United States. In 2013, while living in Georgia, he was involved in a fight where he cut a man with a knife. Georgia court records corroborate this account. A judge found him guilty of aggravated assault, and he served three years in prison. Since his release, Ms. Gurung said her brother had been living with her family in their small Harrisburg home, staying out of trouble and working at a local warehouse.
Ms. Gurung and her husband are U.S. citizens and have a young daughter who was born in the United States. Yet, she said, their family now lives in fear.
'Bhutan kicked us out,' she said, recounting her family's journey. 'We lived over 20 years in Nepal. We couldn't belong there. We came to the United States with ultimate hope. Now there is fear again.'
'Where,' she wondered, 'do we belong?'