Just after Memorial Day weekend, at the end of May, Jermaine Thomas says ICE officers shackled his wrists and ankles and led him on to a plane.
At the airport, Thomas says he tried to stop the deportation. He told the officers he’d never been to Jamaica in his life. He asked them to Google his Supreme Court case – the one his attorneys brought before the justices in 2016, which asked whether babies born to soldiers on U.S. Army bases in foreign countries should get U.S. citizenship.
“My situation is black and white,” Thomas says. “I’m right, they’re wrong. They made a mistake. They can fix it. It’s not that complicated.”
Thomas has a Social Security number, and a card to prove it. As a child, his family lived abroad, as his family followed his father’s deployments. But as an adult, he’s only lived in the United States, mostly in Central Texas.
That’s where he was when he was evicted this spring, and arrested for trespassing as he gathered his things on the lawn of his former apartment.
As a result of this suspected crime and a previous removal order, he was deported.
Nearly two months later, he says he is still stuck in a homeless shelter in Jamaica.
Pictures show the conditions: a room full of beds. Some windows have no glass – they’re just holes in the wall with metal bars. They let the mosquitoes in, but the mattresses also have bedbugs, Thomas says. His body is covered in bites. Next to the toilet at the shelter is a plastic bucket with a cup floating in the top of the water. To make the toilet flush, he must pour cup after cup of water from the bucket into the tank.
He says he spends most of each day in the outdoor courtyard on the phone, calling the Department of Homeland Security, and every U.S. agency he can think of. He paces around the shelter, a cement building painted yellow, ringed with a chain-link fence.
He’s getting shaky in the heat. He says he’s struggled with seizures for a long time, and doesn’t have access to the pills he normally takes to prevent them.
“I would prefer to be in heaven, if that was the only choice. Just get it over with and deport me to heaven.” – Jermaine Thomas
“It’s too hot to think. The whole train of thought, you lose that,” Thomas says. “You’re smacking the bugs and wiping the sweat off you. You can’t really keep the phone to your face while you’re talking because the sweat will get on it and freeze the phone. The Wi-Fi is in and out all the time. And you gotta be careful, because there’s a lot of people just eavesdropping on your conversation, so you’ve gotta be careful with your sensitive information.”
On the other end of the line, he’s having no luck so far. When he explained his birth on a U.S. Army base in Frankfurt to one government employee, they told him to go to Germany.
“I would prefer to be in heaven, if that was the only choice,” Thomas says. “Just get it over with and deport me to heaven.”
Test Case
Many babies born to servicemembers abroad do get citizenship, but not Thomas. His U.S. soldier father was born in Jamaica – though his father gained U.S. citizenship through military service and ultimately renounced his Jamaican citizenship. Thomas’ mother was born in Kenya, and followed her servicemember husband across the globe.
Thomas was born in 1986 at a U.S. Army hospital on a U.S. Army base in Germany, where his father was deployed at the time.
Thomas’ citizenship – or statelessness – is still a murky thing. The Supreme Court decided not to take Thomas’ case in 2016, and so the central question in his case is open.
Before his case moved up to the Supreme Court, it was considered by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. There, Thomas’ attorney Charlotte Herring argued: Of course he should be a citizen. His father served 18 years in the U.S. military. And, she argued, treaty language between Germany and the U.S. indicated that any servicemember’s child born on a U.S. base there should become a U.S. citizen.
But the attorney arguing against Thomas’ citizenship said it would be a slippery slope: if the son of a U.S. servicemember with a non-citizen mother could be fully American, what about a baby born to a civilian staff member on the base? What if a German doing menial labor gave birth on the American base? What then?
Thomas’ father died when he was still young, and Thomas has struggled with multiple mental illnesses. He’s been in and out of jail and homeless shelters, and on and off meds, but he’s managed to keep close relationships in his family. His mother and brothers in Texas told the Chronicle they’re devastated by his deportation.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has been quiet. Before the Chronicle’s first story on Thomas’ deportation published in early June, we sent DHS questions. We received no response.
Twenty-six days after we first contacted DHS, the department sent a request to update the story with a statement. It began: “Jermaine Thomas is a violent, criminal illegal alien from Jamaica who had final orders of removal and was deported back to his home country. Thomas spent nearly two decades posing a significant threat to public safety.”
The Chronicle responded: “In what sense is Jermaine Thomas ‘from Jamaica’ or is Jamaica his ‘home country?’ This does not seem to align factually with his having never been to the country in his life.”
DHS did not respond. We have followed up twice more with no response. As of publication, it’s been 23 days.
The Chronicle provided Jermaine with DHS’s full statement. He responded: “What the hell? Where is she coming up with this?”
Editor’s Note Thursday, July 29, 12:58pm: This story has been updated. A previous version stated that Thomas was deported as a result of the suspected trespassing; this charge initiated the deportation process, but he also had an existing removal order.
This article appears in July 25 • 2025.