Six former Bhutanese refugees living in Pennsylvania — who have legal residency in the U.S. — were detained by ICE

HARRISBURG — Six former Bhutanese refugees from central Pennsylvania who hold legal status in the United States were detained by ICE, as President Donald Trump’s administration moves into a new, more aggressive phase of immigrant detentions, including of those who came here legally.

The detainment of the Bhutanese residents — five who are from the Harrisburg area, and one from nearby Cumberland County — was discussed at a news conference in the state Capitol building Tuesday, in which local Bhutanese leaders and Democratic state lawmakers advocated for their immediate release and called on Pennsylvania’s federal elected officials to help them return home.

Tilak Niroula, the head of the Bhutanese Community in Harrisburg, a civic organization, said that Bhutanese residents in the area are law-abiding citizens, but that if any of the people being detained did something wrong, they should have been given due process through the judicial system. The families were not given an explanation of why their loved ones were being held by ICE, or if they were, it was not understood due to a language barrier.

The names of the detainees have not been released by local officials; Niroula, however, disclosed three of their names, with the permission of their families: Ashok Gurung, 32; Bikash Gurung; and Maita Gurung, 43. They are not related to one another. All six of the detainees are men ages 30 through 55 and were picked up from their homes or public spaces this month, Niroula said. The three whose names were disclosed each appear to have some form of criminal record, including mostly nonviolent offenses such as public drunkenness or harassment, according to state court records.

Only some of the detainees appear in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee database, said Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas, with two of the Pennsylvanians now being held by ICE in a Texas detention center, two in Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Northwestern Pennsylvania, and two they have not been able to locate.

Refugees in the United States must apply one year after their resettlement for full legal status and permanent residency — often called getting a “green card.” After five years, they are eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship. Refugees go through an arduous, yearslong background process before they are resettled in the U.S. that often includes living for a time in a refugee camp near their home country. This differs from the asylum process, in which people arrive in the U.S. and say they need protection but do not immediately need to prove their persecution in their home country.

Devi Gurung, whose younger brother Ashok Gurung is one of the detainees and was picked up by ICE in his driveway on March 9, said through a translator that her brother has been in the United States since 2012, and served a four-year sentence for assault from 2013 to 2017. He has been working as a mechanic his release, she added. The Inquirer was not immediately able to locate his criminal records.

“We live in a climate of fear, since he has already served for what he had done,” Devi Gurung said in a tearful interview through an interpreter. “He was working. He was leading a normal life, and to be picked up like this, we are very surprised and we want him back.”

Bishwa Chhetri, who is Bhutanese, said he knew one of the other detainees by a nickname, and described him as a sweet unhoused man who seemed to have mental health challenges and has family who lives nearby. He was picked up by ICE while on the street earlier this month.

Harrisburg is home to one of the largest Bhutanese refugee communities in the country, with many former refugees settling there permanently for its job opportunities, affordable cost of living, and physical likeness to their home country, PennLive reported. There are an estimated 25,000 Bhutanese people living in the Harrisburg area.

Chhetri said the recent ICE detentions have chilled the community, leading some Bhutanese residents to avoid leaving their homes in fear of getting detained.

State Sen. Patty Kim, a Democrat representing the area, noted during the news conference that the Bhutanese community in Harrisburg is diverse, with some Hindus and some Christians, all of whom play a critical role in the Harrisburg economy and community.

“It’s amazing how quickly this community has put away their past trauma, started a new life, and has contributed in many ways to our region,” Kim added. “We are lucky to have them.”

At least 70,000 Bhutanese-Nepali refugees live in the United States, research shows, their path to this country long and torturous. Many have been refugees twice, first in their ancestral homeland of Nepal, and again in their country of resettlement.

In the mid-1980s, the Bhutanese government launched a “One County, One Nation” campaign to unify the country’s culture and religion, sparking political violence against Bhutanese Nepalis — and causing a major refugee crisis.

Within a few years, tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalese fled or were expelled from Bhutan, and more than 100,000 ethnic Nepalese refugees from Bhutan moved into camps in southeast Nepal, according to the U.S. State Department. In 2006, the United States and seven other countries — Australia, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom — began a large-scale resettlement program.

Federal lawmakers representing the area, including U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick and U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, did not respond to requests for comment. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.

“We were forcefully evicted once,” Niroula said during the news conference. “There is no way we can go back to that same country where we were brutally tortured and forcefully evicted by the government of Bhutan.”

Staff writers Jeff Gammage and Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.