Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees in limbo after deportation from US
Source: The Guardian
Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees in limbo after deportation from US
Human rights experts voice alarm as refugees expelled by the US, not welcomed by Bhutan and rejected by Nepal
Gaurav Pokharel in Kathmandu
Mon 21 Apr 2025 07.00 BST
Last modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 14.21 BST
When Narayan Kumar Subedi received a call from his daughter in the United States three weeks ago, he expected to hear news of his two children’s life abroad, perhaps even plans for a long-awaited reunion. Instead, he was told his 36-year-old son Ashish, a Bhutanese refugee resettled in the US, was being deported.
Ashish had been caught in a domestic dispute that led to police involvement. After several days in detention without proper legal support, he was caught up in Donald Trump’s migration crackdown and deported to Bhutan.
But what followed was a surreal sequence of events that left Ashish and nine other Bhutanese refugees stateless: abandoned by the country they once fled, expelled by the one they tried to call home, and detained by the one they sought refuge in.
Narayan was one of 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese who fled the country in the early 1990s to escape persecution. Many saw emigration as the only hope for a future. Narayan’s children were granted refugee status in the US, but Narayan himself was disqualified over paperwork errors and he still lives in the Beldangi refugee camp in eastern Nepal.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/21/bhutan-nepal-us-immigration