During a series of interviews in April this year, Purna Bhandari repeatedly returned to the same concern: that the psychological strain of living in hiding after his deportation from the United States was beginning to affect his memory and overall well-being.
Speaking from temporary hideouts near the India-Nepal border, Bhandari indicated that the constant fear, instability, and isolation had started to take a toll on his mental health.
“The level of stress I endure daily is immense,” Bhandari said. “I have begun forgetting things I never expected to lose track of.”
Bhandari shared that his son in the United States turned 10 during the third week of January 2026. Having lived apart from his family since his deportation the previous March, he confessed that the date slipped his mind entirely until the boy called him.
During the phone conversation, the boy spoke excitedly about the celebration. Bhandari wished him a happy birthday, but when the child asked where he was, he hesitated.
“Somewhere in Asia,” Bhandari replied.
Bhandari later mentioned there was no safe way to explain that deportation had left him moving between India and Nepal without legal status or permanent shelter. After the call with his son ended, Bhandari walked to a nearby cow shed and sat alone.
“I became very emotional there,” Bhandari said. “In America, I always made sure my children celebrated their birthdays properly. I worked for that life. Now I am hiding like a ghost.”
A Life Unraveling After Bhutanese Deportation
Bhandari’s experience reflects a growing pattern emerging from Bhutanese deportation cases from the United States in recent months.
As of March 18, according to Asian Refugees United (ARU), a nonprofit advocating for deportees, upwards of 75 former Bhutanese refugees have been deported from the U.S. since early 2025, with at least 10 more currently awaiting deportation.
Although born in Bhutan, Bhandari belongs to the ethnic Nepali community that the Bhutanese government expelled from the country in the early 1990s. His family spent years in a refugee camp in Nepal before he resettled in the United States. In 2025, U.S. authorities deported him back to Bhutan. But after he arrived, Bhutanese authorities pushed him and other deportees across the border into India, leaving them without legal protection. Since then, survival has meant constant movement and careful invisibility.
A Bhutanese community leader from the Beldangi refugee camp in Nepal reported that the Nepali government has officially permitted only four deported individuals to stay there. The camp is one of two remaining sites in Jhapa District, housing nearly 7,000 people since the third-country resettlement program was halted in 2018.
The situation in those two camps remains unresolved, and refugees continue to wait for clarity about their future. International aid organizations have phased out their primary support, leaving many to feel abandoned as they navigate a landscape of dwindling resources and uncertain legal status.
More than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees have been resettled across eight Western countries, the majority in the United States. However, those who remain in Beldangi and Sanischare camps continue to live in uncertainty, with divided hopes. Some still seek resettlement abroad, some want to return to Bhutan, others prefer to remain in the camps permanently, and some hope for local integration if possible.
Meanwhile, deported or unprocessed individuals now survive in scattered locations across India and Nepal. They live in unstable conditions and face constant fear of discovery and detention.
Even Bhutan – once considered home – no longer carries the weight of belonging for Bhandari. Over time, that sense of connection has thinned and eroded, leaving behind a disorienting sense of having come from somewhere, yet no longer fully belonging anywhere.
“I don’t feel like I belong anywhere now,” Bhandari said.
A Mother’s Plea: The Devastation of a Broken Home
That sense of displacement does not end with Bhandari – it echoes most sharply in his mother’s voice.
During my recent interview with Purna’s mother, Durga Bhandari, 63, she spoke from her home in Ohio. Under visible strain, she paused often as she tried to steady herself. Even over FaceTime, the weight of separation was clear, and she often took off her glasses to wipe away tears as she spoke.
Durga painted a stark picture of a family fractured by borders: her son living as a deportee and her husband enduring the sudden, frequent crises of advanced COPD. Both her husband and son often find phone calls unbearable, as they become overwhelmed by distress.
“At night, the absence becomes more acute. There are moments when I feel like Purna is at the door, and then I realize it is not real. His son continues to ask when his father will return.”
Beyond her immediate family, Durga also expressed frustration toward the broader resettled Bhutanese community, saying she feels there has not been enough collective advocacy or a unified voice for those still suffering under deportation.
“I don’t sleep anymore,” she said. “My mind is a constant, heavy fog. I try to find a way to reach Purna and bring him home, but I am so lost in the haze that I don’t even know how to proceed.”
With tears in her eyes, Durga Bhandari describes her family’s ordeal since her son Purna was deported. Screen capture of a FaceTime conversation.
Legal Gaps and Community Advocacy
The fog Durga described is not only personal. Many families say it has become a condition of daily life as legal uncertainty deepens.
Advocates working with Bhutanese deportees argue that while institutional protections remain limited, community-led advocacy has become one of the few remaining lifelines.
Pennsylvania-based ARU has played a central role in these efforts, working alongside legal partners such as the Asian Law Caucus to challenge deportation practices and push for greater transparency from U.S. immigration authorities. The work has focused on locating deportees, supporting families trapped in legal limbo, and documenting how deportation often leads not to reintegration, but renewed statelessness across South Asia.
Still, advocates acknowledge that much of this work remains reactive, often beginning only after detention or deportation has already taken place.
Responding to email inquiries, Nawal Rai, who leads Deportation Defense Work for ARU, described similar patterns of fear and psychological distress among affected families. Rai noted that many Bhutanese refugees continue to struggle with anxiety, trauma, and social isolation after years of displacement and uncertainty.
“Our Bhutanese community has endured forced displacement and lived as stateless refugees in uncertainty for decades,” Rai wrote, adding that many individuals continue to show symptoms consistent with PTSD linked to persecution, refugee camp life, and repeated instability.
Rai explained that many deported individuals had served as the primary providers for their families, leaving households in a sudden financial crisis after deportation. Rai also pointed to major barriers in accessing legal representation, with financial hardship often making legal support unattainable.
According to Rai, federal agencies are moving community members through the deportation process so rapidly that families and organizations like ARU often have little time to intervene in meaningful ways. Rai also argued that the federal government has failed to fully consider the unique circumstances facing stateless Bhutanese refugees or provide adequate opportunities for attorneys to advocate on their behalf.
The Mental Health Toll No One Sees
For Rai and the families he and his organization, ARU, support, the legal failures of the deportation system do not just end with a court order; they manifest as a profound, ongoing psychological crisis.
The anguish Rai described mirrors a reality that researchers and mental health experts have increasingly observed within resettled Bhutanese communities in the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a suicide rate of approximately 24.4 per 100,000 among Bhutanese refugees in the United States – nearly double the national average. One key factor identified in research is “thwarted belongingness,” a condition in which individuals lose connection to family, community, and identity over time.
For deported Bhutanese refugees, that erosion often deepens further. Deportation multiplies the sense of displacement.
In August 2025, Sanjil Rai, another former Bhutanese refugee who had been deported from the United States, was found dead by suicide in a hotel room in Damak, Nepal, not that far from the two remaining refugee camps there. Those who knew Rai described a life increasingly shaped by isolation and instability following deportation and family separation.
For Bhandari, Rai’s death did not feel distant or unimaginable. He spoke openly about the internal battles that followed his own deportation. Some days, he said, the darkness became difficult to contain, as isolation, fear, and uncertainty pressed so heavily upon him.
When Bhandari asked if a return to a normal life was possible, his question hung in the air, unanswered by a system defined by the cold realities of deportation and statelessness. All I could do was assure him that his struggle would not remain invisible.
For those living in forced exile after deportation, invisibility is not a void but a condition that quietly organizes life. It shapes daily choices, narrows what feels safe or possible, and defines how long endurance can be stretched before it begins to break.
In Bhandari’s case, as the conversation neared its end, his voice lowered. He asked what should be done if thoughts of suicide became constant and overwhelming. As a reporter, I could not provide therapy or clinical guidance, and I had to remain bound by journalistic ethics, but I urged Bhandari to seek medical help where possible.
Silence soon followed, leaving me unsure whether it was caused by internet connectivity issues or a deliberate choice to remain quiet.
When Bhandari finally spoke again, the tone had shifted. The exhaustion remained, but something steadier had emerged beneath it.
“I am a man without a country,” Bhandari added, “but I will try not to become a ghost to my children. Even if asking for help risks everything, I have to find a way to stay alive for them.”
