"One cloudy morning this past March, 36-year-old Aasis Subedi found himself back in the country his family had fled when he was 4. At the airport in Bhutan,he recognized the traditional bakhu dress of the approaching government officials; a surge of anxiety passed through him. Subedi had arrived alongside nine other Bhutanese men who had immigrated to the U.S. legally but were deported because of criminal convictions ranging from substance abuse and trespassing to assault and burglary."
"Although they had been born in Bhutan, all the men were ethnically Nepali - a group that, beginning in the 1980s, was stripped by the Bhutanese government of their citizenship. Over the years, Bhutanese Nepalis have been imprisoned, tortured, and, in many cases, chased off their land and expelled from the country. Subedi's family had fled in 1993, and he'd grown up in a refugee camp in Nepal before arriving in the U.S. more than a decade ago."
"Then, in 2023, he was convicted of sexual misconduct against a minor. The deportees knew that Bhutan still does not recognize them as citizens and had heard that the country was still imprisoning ethnic Nepalis, so they were sure they were headed to jail. "We thought it was over," Subedi said, "and we'd never see anyone we knew ever again.""
Aasis Subedi, born in Bhutan but raised in a Nepalese refugee camp after his family fled in 1993, returned to Bhutan in March after U.S. deportation following a 2023 conviction for sexual misconduct against a minor. The group of ten deportees had immigrated legally to the U.S. but were removed because of various criminal convictions. Bhutan stripped ethnic Nepalis of citizenship starting in the 1980s, and many were imprisoned, tortured, expelled, or chased off their land. Upon arrival, officials seized belongings, collected documents, confiscated phones and cash, and pressured the men to accept payment to travel to Nepal while withholding legal status.
Read at Intelligencer
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