‘I’M A USCITIZEN’

Trevor Anthony Grant’s release from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention last Thursday, and his deportation to Jamaica after nearly two years in custody, marked a dramatic end to an ordeal he claims was filled with injustice.

Just three days short of completing a two-year detention in ICE custody, Grant, a 60-year-old man born in the US, found himself on a flight to Jamaica, a country he insists he has no ties to.

As he stepped out of the Jamaican authorities’ custody at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, his first words were filled with disbelief.

“This is it? Where the people at? Where is the media?” he asked, confused and uncertain about his surroundings.

He told a compelling tale of bureaucratic mistakes, racial profiling, and a system that failed to properly assess his identity, culminating in what he believes was a wrongful deportation.

“I’m a United States citizen born in Camden, New Jersey,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

According to Grant, his ordeal began on March 2, 2023. He was leaving a woman’s house when ICE agents approached him at a gas station, seemingly looking for someone who had previously stayed at that address. They asked if he knew a man named ‘Mr Nicley’.

His denial led to a verbal dispute, which ended in his detention.

“I was busy, trying to get to work. I am a truck driver … . He got offended and we started [to argue]. He started saying, ‘Look, I’m a federal officer’, and I told him, ‘I don’t care’, so he arrested me and took me to Montgomery County processing centre,” he said, noting that ICE has power to detain a person for up to 90 days while they carry out inestigations.

“Upon the completion of that 90 days, [Name redacted], the ICE officer, came to me and said, ‘Look, if I let you out of here and you come after me, I’m a come after you with everything that I got’. ... He said, ‘By the way, you still have that attorney?’ In reply, I said no, and that’s when everything went downhill. He kept me in ICE detention facility for 23 months,” Grant told The Sunday Gleaner.

According to Grant, Montgomery County has a policy that ICE can only hold a person for up to two years.

“Now, two days short of the eve of those two years, ICE came up with travel documents. Now, mind you, ICE been trying to get travel documents from the Jamaican Consulate for two years and have not gotten them, so I am highly suspicious if these travel documents to kick a United States citizen out of the country is legal,” Grant said.

Checks by The Sunday Gleaner outlined that there is a 90-day removal period and, once the final removal order is issued, ICE aims to deport an individual within 90 days.

Grant said, while in detention, he allegedly spoke with the Jamaican consulate over the phone.

“I had an interview with the Jamaican consulate ... at which time, [they] came to the conclusion that I am not from Jamaica,” Grant said.

Asked whether he had been given any document clearing this up, he said no.

“They don’t do that. They simply have an interview with you over the phone and they make a determination there based on the information you give them and the information back there. I couldn’t give them any information for Jamaica because this is my first time being in Jamaica,” Grant said.

He claimed that ICE then went to the office of Jamaica’s consul general in Houston.

“I had an interview with that lady, at which time [she] also came to the conclusion that I am not a Jamaican citizen. So she was more reluctant to send documents. ... I stated before, the travel documents to kick me out the country are highly questionable, seeing that they’ve been trying for two years to get those documents and, upon the eve of me being released, all of a sudden these documents pop up,” Grant said.

“I bet my last bottom dollar those documents are fabricated. This is my first time in Jamaica. Man, I don’t have no Jamaican relatives,” he stressed, noting that his parents were also not Jamaica.

The Sunday Gleaner made several attempts to reach various offices of Jamaican consulates in the United States by phone and email last week, to see if they could shed light on Grant’s case.

Our news team also sought responses from the US Embassy in Kingston and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. However, up to press time, there was no reply to emails sent.

Looking to the hills after exiting the processing centre, Grant’s first impression of Jamaica was that it seemed like a beautiful place and reminded him somewhat of California.

Grant said he is an Israelite and also a minister, and that all things happen according to the purpose of God.

“I also had a vision being in a country and preaching the gospel, so maybe this is it. I’m a Jew, so I am looking for a Jewish organisation or any church to start my ministry. It’s going to be a doozie because I’m touched by God Almighty,” he proclaimed.

Grant said a friend he recently met gave him a place to stay in Red Hills, St Andrew, for a couple days.

“After that, I don’t know, whatever the Lord has. The Lord had that man prepare a place for me. I just came out; I thank God for that. A lot of people come out, they ain’t got no place to stay, but the Good Lord had this man say, ‘You ain’t got nowhere, you could stay with me’,” Grant told The Su nday Gleaner.

He said that he explained his situation to ICE officers who flew with the deportees to Jamaica.

“Their response was, ‘Hey, if your story is true and the Jamaican Government determines that you are not a Jamaican citizen, we will take you, put you back on the plane.’

“Unfortunately, they left before I finished the interview (processing),” Grant claimed.

DOCUMENTS

He showed The Sunday Gleaner a few documents he had in his makeshift bag, including one from the United States Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Services Division, with the agency case number affixed.

“The FBI identified your 10-print submission which contained the following descriptions: Name: Grant, Trevor Anthony. Sex: Male. Race: Black. Birth Date 1964/02/07. Birth Place: United States. Citizenship: United States,” it reads.

He also showed The Sunday Gleaner biometric assessments of his fingerprints and those of a ‘Mr Devon Nicley’, who he claims the authorities are insisting he is.

It appears the US authorities wanted Nicley for re-entering the US after deportation in 1992.

The US Department of Homeland Security Record of Deportable/Inadmissable alien documents perused by The Sunday Gleaner says Devon Nicley, 65, a citizen of Jamaica, was born 04/27/1959.

The document said Nicley had a Houston, Texas address and the date, place, time and manner of last entry is unknown.

It is stated that other aliases of Devon Nicley are ‘Christopher Martin’, ‘Charles Powell’, ‘Devon Augustus Nicley’, ‘Devon Nicley’, ‘Devon Lewis Nicley’ and ‘Ronald Lewis Sutton’.

Another document in Grant’s possession was a warrant for the deportation of ‘Devon Augustus Nicley’. It said Devon Augustus Nicley was deported at port of Miami Airport on 7-7-92 via American Airline flight 1047. His departure was witnessed and signed by an US officer.

Grant was insistent his story be told, adding that he left seven-year-old twin boys in the US.

“Someone needs to know what ... [is happening] to black Americans in America. I am not the first, and I won’t be the last. There was also another individual that was in ICE nine months ago. ICE locked him up, he hired a lawyer. These lawyers are charging you US$10,000 to US$15,000. Look, I don’t have US$10,000 to pay, and, even if I did have US$10,000, I’m not going to pay it.

“The law is the law. The documents prove it and fingerprints don’t lie. You and I can look alike, but you and I will never have the same biometric fingerprints. That biometric that I showed you is not Mr Nicley. So that, in itself, tells you that something very, very shady is going on. Someone needs to get to the bottom of this,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

NOT UNILATERAL

Deportation is not unilateral and requires an agreement between two countries. Under international law, countries are obligated to receive their own citizens who are deported from another country. Countries can, however, block deportation flights from landing, decline to give travel documents to their citizens, and also refuse to acknowledge that the deportees are their citizens.

When the options by the deporting country being placed on the table do not work, a third country willing to accept the deportees becomes a viable option.

Just last week, dozens of mostly Asian migrants were put on a deportation flight from San Antonio in the US, but reports are that, instead of landing near their home countries, the migrants eventually arrived in the Costa Rican capital of San José, where they were shuttled off to the southern part of the country to await their fates.

The aforementioned flight is among the latest in a series of US deportations that have made a stopover in Central America with countries like Panama similarly serving as a bridge in recent weeks.

It is not clear if Jamaica has a position on accepting foreign nationals.

Meanwhile, it is not strange for Jamaicans to enter the US with false identification. A story published on ICE’s website said a former Georgia police officer was sentenced for immigration fraud.

The story said Devon Campbell, aka Wilmott Alvin Livingston, was sentenced to 10 months in prison in July 2024 for the crime, following which he was deported back to Jamaica.

Campbell, a former Jamaican policeman, left Jamaica in November 2007 and entered the US using a Jamaican passport bearing the fabricated name Wilmott Alvin Livingston and a false birthdate.

He later used the documents to become a police officer, got married to a US citizen, divorced, and remarried in the US and went undetected for over 10 years.

He pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully procuring citizenship or naturalisation and one count of using a passport secured by false statements.

Campbell’s citizenship was revoked and he was removed from the US.

andre.williams@gleanerjm.com