There are reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained 13 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese individuals in the United States. Among those detained, 5 are reported to be from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. These individuals, who had come to the U.S. as refugees from a third country, Nepal, have been detained, but local officials say the legal grounds for deportation are complicated. Political parties in Pennsylvania have organized rallies to protest the detention of Bhutanese refugees.
The reasons for their detention have not been disclosed. Most of the detainees were arrested from their homes. It is said that their detention is based on old cases. Some individuals had already served jail time for various reasons, but questions are being raised about why they were arrested again after having completed their legal sentences.
In the first two weeks of March, six Bhutanese green card holders living in the Pennsylvania area were arrested, according to leaders from the local refugee community and elected officials. Five of the men were from Dauphin County, while one was from Cumberland County. Their family members have said that they do not know why ICE took the men.
Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas is working with families and other elected officials to obtain details, which have so far been limited. According to Douglas, some of the men had prior charges or were facing charges in Pennsylvania, but not all of them had criminal cases. Tilak Niroula, the board president of the Bhutanese community in Harrisburg, said that all of the men arrived in the United States between 2012 and 2016 through the refugee resettlement program. “They all have families here,” Niroula said. None of them can speak English and will need translators. “If any individual is found guilty of criminal charges, we have a justice system in place. We want to follow the legal process,” he said.
In the 1980s and 1990s, more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese were expelled from Bhutan. They took refuge in eastern Nepal. In 2006, after the United States and other countries began accepting them as refugees, more than 100,000 of them resettled in the U.S.
