They lost their Nepalese citizenship years ago and are now living in a ‘stateless limbo’ amid Trump’s deportations

Aasis Subedi, a Bhutanese Nepali refugee, finds himself back in the same Nepal refugee camp he spent part of his youth, once again stateless.

Last month, Subedi and two dozen community members from across the US were deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan country where they had never previously set foot. At least four, including Subedi, were immediately rejected by Bhutanese authorities and then expelled to India, where they fled to a refugee camp in Nepal.

Subedi is one of the more than 100,000 Bhutanese Nepalis who fled ethnic cleansing and were made stateless by the Bhutanese government who stripped them of their citizenship rights in the 1980s. Since 2008, more than 90,000 have been resettled in the US.