New Delhi: On the night of March 27, around 18 US border enforcement officials waited at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport for nearly eight hours. They were escorting a group of about 12 Bhutanese of Nepali origin on a commercial United Airlines flight that had landed that evening.The group spent the night in the airport lounge before boarding a scheduled Druk Air flight early on March 28. Two hours later, they landed in Paro, where the Bhutanese authorities formally took custody of the deportees.By March 30, four of the men had surfaced in the custody of Nepali police in the border town of Kakarbhitta. The whereabouts of the others remain unknown.While it is believed that at least a dozen have been deported to the subcontinent, refugee activists in the US say that as many as 60 Bhutanese of Nepali origin have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials under the Donald Trump-era immigration crackdown. They warn that more could soon be flown in, caught in a diplomatic and legal limbo.These are not undocumented workers – they were legally admitted under what was the largest UNHCR-led resettlement programme in history. Of the 100,000 Bhutanese refugees resettled, more than 80,000 were accepted by the US, primarily during George W. Bush’s presidency.“This is a reverse cycle of what happened 34 years ago,” said Nepali human rights advocate Gopal Krishna Siwakoti, who met four of the deportees in Kakarbhitta, a town in Jhapa district.In the early 1990s, more than 100,000 people of Nepali origin were expelled or fled Bhutan following a wave of nationalist policies that seemingly forced them conform the majority culture. Bhutan had claimed them to be illegal immigrants.Most ended up in refugee camps in eastern Nepal via India, where some remain to this day.The use of India as a transit route in these deportations of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese Americans has raised serious questions. Activists argue that New Delhi now shares responsibility for the welfare of these individuals.“The fact that Indian airports are being used as transit points for deporting Nepali-speaking Bhutanese Americans to Bhutan – and that Bhutan expelled them immediately after they landed – means the Indian government must hold both the US and Bhutan accountable,” Robin Gurung, co-executive director of San Francisco-based Asian Refugees United told The Wire. “It must ensure the safety and security of the deportees.”Gurung’s group has been raising the alarm over the precarious position of the Bhutanese-American community in the current crackdown in the United States, even as they begin to seek legal recourse.After arrival in Paro airport on March 28 morning, the dozen-odd deportees, most of them green card holders, were handed over to Bhutanese officials in uniform. They took them to a luxury hotel, and offered separate rooms and breakfast. “They thought it was a warm welcome although they were not sure was going to happen after that,” said Siwakoti, who heads a Kathmandu-based NGO International Institute for Human Rights, Environment and Development (INHURED International).Later that day, each man was interrogated separately by Bhutanese officials, according to the version Siwakoti pieced together. “They were told: ‘You don’t belong here. Your parents left voluntarily. You have no citizenship rights here.’” The men said they were also quizzed on whether they could speak Dzongkha. When they said no, they were told, ‘English doesn’t work here.’”The men were further unsettled when they were told that other deportees had apparently said they did not wish to remain in Bhutan. “They were already very tired, bewildered and afraid. They described the officials’ tone as intimdiating”.When Bhutanese authorities asked if they had any relatives or contacts nearby, Siwakoti said the men naturally mentioned Nepal, where a community of about 7,000 still lives in two refugee camps.Next morning, Bhutanese officials gave each man 30,000 ngultrum (roughly Rs 30,000) and arranged for them to be driven to Phuentsholing, on the Bhutan-India border. They were split into smaller groups and sent off in taxis, staggered at 30-minute intervals.Despite having no documentation, they were not stopped at the Indian border. “According to them, they did not meet any Indian officials. They were not even questioned while crossing the border, because they were accompanied in a Bhutanese vehicle by the Bhutanese plainclothes officials,” Siwakoti told The Wire. “In fact, during their entire transit through India, they were not questioned or stopped by Indian officials. That is something very strange, actually.”Once near the India-Nepal border, the men paid Nepali Rupees 22,500 each to cross into Nepal through a so-called “donkey route” – a short informal passage through forest and shallow river used by smugglers and agents.Three of the men made their way to the Beldangi refugee camp in eastern Nepal, where one of them was reunited with his father. But their arrival did not go unnoticed. “There was a high alert,” said Siwakoti. “Police, immigration and camp officials had been told to report any new entries.”By the next morning, the three were arrested by Nepali police and later handed over to immigration authorities. A fourth deportee, Ashok Gurung, had travelled separately and also reached Nepal. The whereabouts of the remaining is currently unknown.A local Nepali media outlet reported that the father of one of them had now become suddenly in charge of the welfare of these four men, travelling 53 kilometres each day from his camp to see them in custody. Fifty-six-year-old Kumar Subedi was unable to go to the United States due to discrepancies in his documents. However, his wife and children qualified, and he encouraged them to go, which led to the family breaking up. “I was preparing to go to the US as my children had been calling me. I hoped my paperwork would work out someday. Now that my son himself has been expelled from the US, all those dreams are shattered,” Kumar told Setopati. “My life has been full of hardship, and now I worry my son’s future will be dark too.”Meanwhile, in the US, Gurung’s family said he had been working on his car at his home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when ICE agents detained him.According to his family, Gurung had been admitted as a refugee in 2012 and pleaded guilty to an assault charge two years later.Five days after the deportation and three weeks after their detention, ICE released details about the men’s criminal records, reported PennLive. Charges included various forms of assault, for which most had already served time. ICE noted that removal orders had existed since 2015.Gurung’s family said he had no idea his immigration status was at risk.Activists argue that the Bhutanese refugees’ case is distinct from others targeted in the crackdown – they lack any other nationality, having been stripped of Bhutanese citizenship.“These 12 who were deported left Bhutan within 24 hours of arriving. Clearly, Bhutan doesn’t want them,” said Siwakoti.In a statement shared by the US refugee rights group Asian Refugees United (ARU), Democratic Senator John Fetterman said it was “unacceptable that these Pennsylvanians who fled Bhutan for their lives, after being forced out of a brutal regime, are now being deported to the same country that tried to erase them.” The Wire had contacted the Bhutanese embassy in New Delhi, but there was no response.It remains unclear why Bhutan accepted the men, given they no longer hold Bhutanese citizenship. However, the Trump administration’s treatment of countries like South Sudan – which faced visa sanctions for refusing to accept deportees – may offer some clues. Last month, Bhutan grew anxious after international media reports suggested it could face similar penalties in a draft list of potential countries facing travel ban.The fate of the four detained in Nepal remains unresolved. The director general of Nepal’s Department of Immigration told The Kathmandu Post that investigations were ongoing, while Nepal’s home ministry has asked the foreign office to raise the matter with Bhutan.Siwakoti, who has long worked with Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, said the episode raises troubling questions. “The US washed its hands of them. Bhutan rejected them. India looked away. And Nepal jailed them,” he said. “Where exactly are they supposed to go?”