State Sen. Patty Kim spoke at Thursday’s event.
Harrisburg-area state and county representatives spoke out against federal government action on Thursday following reports that several Bhutanese community members in the region had been detained.
“These green card holders are being penalized despite taking the right pathways to citizenship,” said Justin Douglas, chair of the Dauphin County commissioners, who was joined by state Sen. Patty Kim and Rep. Dave Madsen at the press conference.
Youraj Koirala, board chairman of the Bhutanese Community of Central PA, said that he’d gotten calls from several families this past Saturday who told him their loved ones had been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Two individuals were taken from their families,” Koirala, also an attorney, said.
He indicated that both individuals had previously served time, sentenced for crimes, but had “faced the consequences of the legal system of the United States.”
“Now, months or years after the completion of their sentencing, these folks have been punished, yet again, for the same crimes but now harsher, now facing the possibility of removal,” he said.
Koirala emphasized that immigrants have legal rights when it comes to warrants.
Attorney Youraj Koirala, board chairman of the Bhutanese Community of Central PA
Koirala was joined Wednesday by Robin Gurung, co-founder and co-executive director of Asian Refugees United.
“I want to believe that humanity still exists, but what ICE is doing is not humanity,” Gurung said.
He added that “at least 20” Nepali-speaking Pennsylvania community members have been deported to Bhutan without due process.
Madsen spoke at the event about his personal experience getting calls about ICE. He said his neighbor, a landscaper, had recently asked him for help with a Guatemalan friend, Tomas, who had been detained.
“Tomas was walking in Cumberland County, was stopped, found out that he was undocumented, and then he was detained and put in the detention center,” Madsen said. “He was given hardly any food. He was put in the detention center that was way overcrowded, without a bed, stuffed into buses. I saw Nate, who is a central Pennsylvanian white man that grew up on a farm, fighting for and working with Tomas’s family to figure out what’s going on, like it was his own son.”
Madsen expressed interest in broader immigration reform and concern for the two Bhutanese individuals recently detained, as did Kim.
“I am committed to do everything in my power to bring these individuals home with their families,” Kim said.
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