U.S. Citizen in ICE Detention: Who Decides Citizenship

A Florida birth certificate, a revoked passport and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia sit at the center of a case that asks who gets the final word when ICE says a man claiming U.S. birth is foreign.

Documents reviewed by the Associated Press support the claim that a mentally ill man held since January is a U.S. citizen in ICE detention, kept at a state prison in Indiana while the government insists he was born in Jamaica, AP reported Oct. 27. Phillip James, 39, faces a removal order, has an appeal pending at the Board of Immigration Appeals and a habeas petition before a federal judge, and his case has become a test of how citizenship is decided once someone is already inside the deportation system.

It matters now because citizen detentions are no longer isolated events, and the system for correcting them was built for rare cases. ProPublica counted 506 U.S. citizens detained by immigration agents from January 2025 through September 2026, a tally it calls almost certainly an undercount. Most such detentions last hours or days. James has been held about ten months.

According to AP, a birth certificate filed by his lawyers shows birth in Orange County, Florida, in 1987 to a U.S.-citizen mother and a Jamaican father, and a 1988 Florida paternity record AP obtained matches it. He received a U.S. passport in 2008, and Florida prison records from a 2011 assault conviction list him as a citizen. The government has since revoked the passport and denied a citizenship application. DHS told AP the passport rested on a “fraudulent birth certificate” but offered no proof. Jamaican authorities told his lawyers they have no birth record under the name the government uses.

The complication is James himself. Since 2024, AP reported, he has filed applications claiming Jamaican birth, adoption by Americans and a 1992 birth year. Medical experts’ reports describe his belief in a Jamaican birth as a delusion tied to paranoid schizophrenia. He represented himself before the immigration judge who ordered him removed to Jamaica in April. In a Sept. 28 filing, an assistant U.S. attorney called him “a native of Jamaica and a citizen of Lebanon” and argued that citizenship should be decided in immigration court.

How a claimed U.S. citizen in ICE detention gets a ruling

ICE has no authority to detain or remove a citizen, but whether someone is a citizen is usually answered inside the removal process, not before it. In removal proceedings DHS generally carries the first burden of proving that a respondent is not a citizen, a rule written into 8 C.F.R. 1240.8(c) for people charged as present without admission. A valid passport would normally be strong proof of citizenship, which is why the revocation matters: it takes the government’s own document off the scale.

The route out of a wrong answer is slow. Under 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(5), a federal appeals court reviewing a removal order decides a nationality claim itself if the facts are undisputed, and sends it to a district court for a new hearing if they are genuinely disputed. For James, that path runs through the BIA and then the Seventh Circuit. A separate statute, 8 U.S.C. 1503, allows a suit for a declaration of citizenship, but not when the issue arose in connection with removal proceedings. The practical effect is that someone in his position can stay detained while appeals run, unless a habeas judge orders release first.

Competency is the second open question. Under the BIA’s 2011 decision in Matter of M-A-M-, immigration judges must assess competency when there are signs of mental illness and adopt safeguards if needed. Whether that happened at a hearing where James spoke for himself, asserting the very birthplace experts call a symptom, is likely to matter on appeal, though AP did not report the grounds of the BIA filing.

DHS denies that ICE detains citizens and says detainees receive due process. Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE chief of staff, told AP the citizenship evidence appears strong and that wrongful detentions should be rare and brief. The problem predates this administration: the Government Accountability Office found that ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121 and removed 70 from fiscal 2015 through March 2020, and urged better tracking.

AP reported that Indiana is paid $291 per detainee per day at the Bunker Hill facility, more than three times ICE’s median bed rate of $92. The case follows the detention of a special education student near Santa Maria High School and arrives as the full Fifth Circuit rejected a due process right to bond hearings. If Jamaica will not accept James, AP noted, ICE could try a third-country removal.

What to watch:

U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty’s ruling on the Aug. 19 habeas petition, and whether he accepts that citizenship belongs in immigration court.
The BIA’s decision on the removal order, which would open the door to Seventh Circuit review and a possible district court hearing on nationality.
Whether DHS backs its fraud claim about the Florida birth certificate with evidence.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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