ICE unlawfully detains five Bhutanese immigrants in Harrisburg who have legal status

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement unlawfully detained five Bhutanese immigrants who have permanent legal status in Harrisburg on Monday. The Bhutanese community fled government persecution in the 1980s and have been granted refugee status under the Bush and Obama administrations. 

Five members of Central Pennsylvania’s Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community, who have full legal refugee status, became the first green card holders in the commonwealth to be detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Monday. 

“ These are five of my constituents,” Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas said during a press conference inside the Pennsylvania Capitol on Tuesday.

“This is personal. Four of them have children. All of them have families. They work here. They pay taxes here. They raise their kids here. They are part of the fabric of this region, and now they’re being detained and ripped away from everything and everyone they know.” 

Harrisburg and its surrounding area is home to 50,000 Nepali speaking Bhutanese residents who fled Bhutan due to government persecution over 30 years ago and were granted protections by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. 

“In the 1990s, the government of Bhutan, they brought a policy called ‘one nation, one people.’ Just one different kind of people,” Talik Niroula, Chairman of the Bhutanese Community in Harrisburg, told reporters following Tuesday’s press conference.

“Nepali speaking Bhutanese were following Hindu religion, Buddhist religion, but [the Bhutanese government] just wanted the Buddhist religion to stay there. Just one religion, one nation, one people.” 

Niroula went on to explain that this policy led to the forced eviction of over 100,000 Nepali speaking Bhutanese who eventually fled to Nepal and then to the US. 

According to the US Census, Harrisburg is home to the largest Bhutanese community in Pennsylvania, followed by Scranton, Erie and Lancaster, and these communities face higher rates of suicide, poverty and mental health issues due to the trauma they have endured. 

“President George W. Bush, with bipartisan Senate and Congress, they approved to resettle up to 60,000 Bhutanese in the United States. That’s how long the process began,”  Niroula added. 

Roughly 70% of the Bhutanese who resettled in the US are now naturalized citizens.

Tuesday’s press conference in Harrisburg was hastily put together by Douglas, along with State Sen. Patty Kim (D-Dauphin), who was the first Asian American ever elected to the Pennsylvania House, and State Reps. David Madsen (D-Dauphin) and Justin Fleming (D-Dauphin) following Monday’s detainments.

“ Let’s be absolutely clear. These are legal, permanent residents. Green card holders. These are not undocumented individuals. These are people our country made a promise to under President George W. Bush and reaffirmed under President Barack Obama. The United States made a bipartisan commitment to resettle Bhutanese Nepali refugees who had nowhere else to go,” Douglas said. 

“ Offering hope to the vulnerable is what makes America great. Ripping that hope away with handcuffs and fear, that’s what makes America cruel. It makes us weak.”