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Citizens of nowhere

Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Some stateless people entered the United States and remain here legally, protected by asylum or another status. But like many undocumented immigrants, most live in the shadows, careful not to attract attention and unable to do anything that requires state identification. As such, many are unable to find regular work and can only get by on jobs that pay cash and don't ask too many questions. Others take the risky step of fighting for asylum, work authorization, and other protections. Advertisement Like other undocumented immigrants, some people who are stateless remain in the country illegally because they also have nowhere to go. Amadou was allowed to temporarily reenter the United States by the Biden administration. He lives in Ohio with his family. Huiyee Chiew One such stateless person is Amadou, a 59-year-old electrician from Mauritania, who arrived in the United States more than 25 years ago, fleeing conflict that had broken out between his home country and Senegal. (Amadou is a pseudonym. His name is being withheld to protect his identity.) Advertisement Like thousands of others without nationalities, he became a citizen of nowhere for reasons beyond his control. People may become stateless because they are born to parents without nationalities — one of the world's largest groups of stateless people are the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group who live in Myanmar and face persecution. Or they live through the dissolution of their home country, like Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, or more recently Sudan or South Sudan, or their government restricts access to citizenship for some groups — like the Bedoons, an Arab minority in Kuwait, who Born and raised in Arab-dominated Mauritania, Amadou lived an uneventful life until a border dispute erupted with neighboring Senegal in 1989. The conflict escalated into ethnic violence, and the Mauritanian government stripped tens of thousands of Black Mauritanians of their citizenship and expelled them to Senegal. Amadou was one of them. Left with nothing and without any legal documents, he survived by doing farmwork. He often went hungry. In 2000, he fled to the United States in the hope of getting asylum. To enter the United States, he used a passport obtained by a friend with connections in the Mauritanian government. Amadou knew the passport deal was illegal, but he had no other choice. He was able to use the fraudulent passport to apply for a US tourist visa and boarded a flight for New York. Once here, he applied for asylum. In the years waiting for his asylum petition to be decided, he lived in Ohio, working as an electrician. But in 2007 his petition was denied and he was ordered to leave the country. The irony is that Amadou's asylum petition was denied in part because the court said that the conditions in Mauritania had improved and that he was unlikely to face persecution if he returned — which would have been relevant if Amadou was indeed still a citizen of that country. Advertisement Lynn Tramonte, the director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, is familiar with Amadou's case. She has witnessed how a lack of understanding among lawyers and immigration judges about statelessness in cases involving Black Mauritanians often leads to deportation. 'Every day [people like Amadou] get a reminder that no country claims you. It's like you are a ghost. But you are still a person,' says Tramonte. Amadou's former attorney, Aneesha Gandhi, says he was not immediately deported in 2007 because Immigration and Customs Enforcement was unable to obtain travel documents for him from the Mauritanian government — unsurprising given that it had revoked his citizenship. So instead, he was placed under an order of supervision and allowed to remain and work in the United States until a solution could be found. That meant reporting regularly to ICE. Amadou says he never missed a check-in. He complied with ICE's requirement to apply for travel documents through the Mauritanian embassy, but the officials there ignored his requests. As an electrician, Amadou always carries his helmet and tool bag to work. Huiyee Chiew And so years passed. Amadou worked in construction, married, and had three children. He and his wife, who is undocumented, settled down in an Ohio suburb. He allowed himself to believe he would be able to stay in the United States, even if he couldn't figure out a path to legal residency. ICE officials had told him so. Advertisement Amadou lives by his grandfather's words: 'Make it good, make it well, make it right.' He focused on working hard, paying taxes, following the law, and raising a happy family. But being stateless, he knew his life could be upended in an instant, no matter how hard he worked to make his immigration status right. Then Donald Trump took office in 2017. Stateless in the age of Trump President Trump has called the asylum system the ' Unlike the Obama administration, which prioritized the deportation of people who had recently been ordered to leave and allowed both ICE attorneys and immigration officers more discretion in individual cases, the first Trump administration targeted all noncitizens who had outstanding orders of removal, old and new, according to the In late 2018, ICE arrested Amadou without warning during a routine check-in. The officers, he recalled, were aggressive, questioning how someone like him with a removal order could have children here. He did not answer but lowered his head. They handcuffed him and took him into custody. Amadou's wife became the family's anchor after his deportation. Huiyee Chiew Amadou spent eight months in ICE detention before authorities finally obtained a temporary travel document to deport him back to Mauritania. The catch: His travel document, issued by Mauritania, only allowed him to stay in that country for 90 to 120 days. (The Mauritanian embassy did not respond to questions about Amadou's case.) Advertisement When Amadou landed in Mauritania, immigration officers barred him from entering the country, saying, 'You are not a Mauritanian.' With nowhere else to go, Amadou traveled to neighboring Senegal to meet relatives of his with the help of a friend. The only things he had were a cane to help him walk, because of a quickly deteriorating necrotic hip, and a plastic bag holding some clothes. 'You don't have papers, you don't have anything,' Amadou said. Back in Ohio, Amadou's family struggled to stay afloat. They didn't see Amadou again for six years. Living in limbo At the end of 2024, Amadou was granted humanitarian parole by the Biden administration, allowing him to temporarily enter the United States. He returned to his home in Ohio. Amadou's humanitarian parole, however, has an expiration date. He is now trying every possible avenue to find a legal way to stay. He has reason to worry. President Trump has called for mass deportations, enhanced ICE enforcement, and the rollback of parole programs. In January, he suspended asylum applications at the southern border, citing an ' Samantha Sitterley, a staff attorney at The bill, first introduced by Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland in 2022, addresses statelessness by establishing a federal definition, determination procedure, protective status, and a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship. It was written by advocates and experts in the field, including United Stateless, and stateless individuals themselves. If passed, the bill could end the legal limbo for stateless persons like Amadou. Advertisement But the chances of passing the bill seem slim for now. Realistically, Sitterley said, the Department of Homeland Security should at least adopt a statelessness definition to ensure a more consistent and humanitarian approach toward stateless people. David Baluarte, a law professor specializing in immigration at the City University of New York School of Law, and who previously worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on a study of statelessness, recalled that when he started working on the issue during the Obama administration, few even knew what 'stateless' meant. And although awareness has grown, political will to do anything about the problem has not. 'The perception [of the current administration] is that they [immigrants] are the problem: 'We need to get rid of them,'' he says. 'Congress is not going to prioritize immigration legislation right now.' He is also concerned about attacks on birthright citizenship. If that constitutional right were taken away, the United States would face a growing stateless population of children born within its borders to undocumented and stateless immigrants. Amadou prays regularly and gives thanks to God for helping him get through difficult times. Huiyee Chiew For Amadou, life remains uncertain. But his years away from his family have shown him to embrace what time he does have with them. After all, everything could change tomorrow.