My name is TJ Mills. I am an immigration attorney who represented David for several years until his tragic death in 2015.
David was born in Sudan in 1966, resided in France as a refugee from the early 1970’s until 1996, and entered the US in 1997 as either a student or visitor with a refugee travel document.
Despite countless calls and letters to the French Embassy, the Sudanese Embassy, and the French and US UNHCR offices, we were unable to corroborate Mr. Kebe’s former residence in these countries nor evidence of his refugee status. His UNHCR refugee card was apparently lost while he resided at a homeless shelter at Ward’s Island in or about 1997 prior to his first detention. We have been unable to locate his sole surviving relative, his mother, with whom he last resided in France.
In 1999, he was detained after an arrest for jumping a subway turnstile -- “theft of services”. He was ordered deported in February 1999. This crime for “theft of services” and his overstay were the sole reasons for his order of deportation in 1999.
In lieu of deportation, however, he remained in INS and then Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detention because neither he nor the agency was able to obtain travel documents to his native Sudan or to France. Mr. Kebe was unable to obtain such records due to the apparent destruction of his Refugee Travel Document and other identity records, his limited recollection (he was only an infant when his parents brought him to France), his mother’s disappearance, and his father’s death.
On December 21, 2004, after repeated constitutional arguments, the Department of Homeland Security finally released Mr. Kebe under an Order of Supervision after a continuous detention of nearly six years--a legal vacuum so devastating that he once attempted suicide.
Despite many efforts—through contacts in Paris (his mom’s last know residence) --we have been unable to locate any of David’s family. I remember David as a kind man who, despite great odds, never relented in the efforts he made to prove his identity and to find lawful status in the United States.