A Texas man has been deported to Jamaica—a country he’s never visited—despite being born on a U.S. Army base in Germany. Jermaine Thomas, born in 1986 to a Jamaican father serving overseas, was ruled ineligible for U.S. citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. After a trespassing arrest in Killeen, Texas, Thomas was transferred from jail to an ICE detention center and later deported.
Thomas told The Austin Chronicle he was shackled and put on a flight originally bound for Nicaragua. “You’re not gonna just kidnap me and traffic me across the lands and international lines and deport me,” he said.
Ultimately sent to Jamaica, Thomas is now stateless and struggling to adapt. “If I don’t have a release day and I don’t get to see a judge, that’s pretty much a life sentence,” he said.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have not commented on the incident.