A Michigan father and green card holder spent nearly two months detained in correctional facilities on deportation proceedings, after getting stopped by border patrol over a previous misdemeanor charge.
Kunal Oberoi’s ordeal began on January 9, when he was returning with his wife and children from visiting his family in India.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent pulled him aside at the Detroit Metro Airport and asked him about a 2018 charge for using marijuana.
Unable to recall the specifics of the incident, the officer confiscated Oberoi’s green card and told him to come back with the police report.
On February 3, Oberoi, 37, returned with the report and handed it to an ICE agent. Moments later, he was detained and later transferred to Calhoun County Correctional Facility — and it would be two months before he was released again.
Neither he nor his wife, Brooke Choquette, thought something like this could happen to him. Choquette, 32, had voted for President Donald Trump and Oberoi supported the administration.
Her husband immigrated to the U.S. legally, married a U.S. citizen, and had been in the country for more than 20 years. Their children were born here.
“I thought that we were safe,” said Choquette in an interview.
Oberoi’s case, his attorney Julian Daman told The Independent, had been spurred by a unique set of circumstances.
As well as the marijuana charge, back in 2011, aged 18, Oberoi been charged with assault after a high school fight, and another charge of destruction of property. Under U.S. immigration law, anyone with a controlled substance conviction is considered inadmissible to the country, meaning that despite being a green card holder, authorities had the power to detain him.
Still, Oberoi had come back and forth from India three times since his 2018 conviction without issue, leaving his family wondering why he was suddenly in jail.
“The answer is pretty simple,” Daman said, pointing to Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policies. “The attitude of ICE after Trump took office is really what kept him there.”
After arriving at the jail, Oberoi, a truck driver, was searched, fingerprinted, and placed in a holding cell, where he spent 22 hours a day, before he was finally moved to a unit. Everything about detention shocked him: The treatment from officers, the clothes, the food. Officers wouldn’t let detainees go outside, citing the freezing weather.
At home in Ypsilanti, 35 miles outside of Detroit, Choquette struggled to explain what had happened to their children.
She told her daughter, Zara, eight, that her dad was off working and would be home soon. Yet, the child kept asking questions, and her mother eventually told her the truth.
“Daddy made a mistake a long time ago,” Choquette explained. “And because he wasn’t born in the United States, he's under a different set of rules than the rest of us, and they're gonna decide if daddy can stay here or if he has to go back to India.”
With her husband behind bars, Choquette, who runs a home daycare, became the sole caregiver and breadwinner. She launched a GoFundMe to help cover her husband’s legal fees.
In early April, Oberoi was transferred to Chippewa County Correctional Facility, six hours away from his home.
There, detainees slept in large rooms with bunk beds accommodating 25 to 30 other men. Oberoi couldn’t sleep and often found himself walking back and forth.
During Oberoi’s final deportation hearing on April 16, Daman asked the judge to consider cancellation of removal, a statute that gives detainees a second chance at staying in the United States.
The judge listened to his arguments and those of the prosecutor. During testimony, Oberoi begged to stay in the U.S., saying he wanted to teach his youngest, Neel, three, to ride a bike and his oldest, a teenager, to drive a car and take his daughter to school.
Eventually, the judge relented.
“I always weigh things on a scale, good and bad,” Choquette recounted the judge saying. “In this situation, I do feel that there's more good than bad.”
The judge dismissed the case but told Oberoi: “If I ever see you in proceedings again, you will be deported.”
After the hearing, Choquette drove six hours to pick up her husband with her children in tow. The family, emotional but glad to be together, went to Applebee’s, where Oberoi enjoyed one of the best meals he’d had in months — a chicken sandwich, wings, and fries. He is frustrated that he had paid for his crime years ago — yet still landed behind bars. To protect himself, Oberoi is now applying for U.S. citizenship.
He still envisions a future in America, but the experience left him feeling betrayed by the justice system. “They put me through a lot,” he said.
For now, his goals are straightforward: “Try to forget about what happened,” Oberoi said, “and stay out of trouble.” He knows how lucky he is to be free.
