ICE holds a man it says is Jamaican, records support his U.S. citizenship claim

Damon Leichty weighs release petition while removal order remains on appeal

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained Phillip James for nearly 10 months while seeking his deportation to Jamaica, although his mother, lawyers and public records say he was born in Florida and is a U.S. citizen. The 39-year-old, also identified as Felibi Siagha-Coke in legal filings, remains held at the Miami Detention Center in Bunker Hill, Indiana. His lawyers are appealing an April removal order and have asked U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty to rule on a petition seeking his release.

The citizenship dispute rests in part on records assembled by James’s lawyers and reviewed by The Associated Press. A birth certificate filed in court by his lawyers and attested to by his mother says James was born in Orange County, Florida, in 1987 to a U.S. citizen mother and Jamaican national father. A 1988 court document in a case establishing his paternity, obtained independently by The Associated Press, matches the certificate’s date of birth, the identities of his birth parents and their residence in Florida. The AP also found that officials issued James a U.S. passport in 2008 under his birth name after he submitted the certificate, and that a New York court order changing his name to Felipe Bella De Campbell Coke led to approval of a second passport in 2023.

Beginning in 2024, for reasons that are unclear, James filed a succession of applications for U.S. citizenship and protections from deportation. He claimed he had been born in Jamaica and acquired citizenship as an adopted child of U.S. citizens, telling a convoluted story that could not be verified. He also claimed he had been born in 1992, a claim the AP review described as false. The government revoked his passport and denied his citizenship application, saying he was born in Jamaica in the same month as James in 1987 and that his “true identity” was Felibi Siagha Baladi Kambil Coke, a name he had recently adopted. The decision did not explain how officials reached that conclusion.

The Associated Press review found that Jamaican officials have denied any record that James was born or has citizenship there, and that public records show he has been unable to provide proof. Court filings also say Jamaican authorities told James’s lawyers they have no record of the birth or citizenship of a person by the name Felibi Siagha Baladi Kambil Coke. Records also show that James could not explain how he obtained the Florida birth certificate. “To this day I don’t understand,” he said in a July 2025 interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Medical experts who recently assessed James filed reports in court saying that he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and that his insistence he was born in Jamaica was a grand delusion. His separate claims include being the illegitimate son of a former Jamaican prime minister and a descendant of a Lebanese royal family; he also claims citizenship in Lebanon despite a lack of evidence. One psychologist concluded James was not “a reliable historian due to the serious nature of his mental illness, including a deeply entrenched delusional belief system.” His mother said in an affidavit that James had suffered from mental illness since childhood, became hard to control as an adolescent and lived in Florida with his father, who died in 2024.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told the AP that James’s original passport, which he held for 15 years, was issued based on a “fraudulent birth certificate,” but it did not answer follow-up questions or provide any proof. DHS also denied that ICE detains U.S. citizens and said detainees facing removal proceedings receive due process. Jacqueline Stevens, a Northwestern University professor who has studied ICE’s wrongful detention of citizens for two decades, said she was not surprised ICE would seek to deport James based on his claims of being foreign-born. She said she was familiar with other cases in which mental illness and disabilities have played a role in similar injustices.

“What’s going on in these cases is that evidence that’s consistent with deportation is treated as accurate and evidence that is inconsistent is treated as fraudulent,” Stevens said. “This case is not a one-off. This is a feature, not a bug, of how ICE handles claims of U.S. citizenship.”

To seek James’s deportation, immigration authorities relied on his statement that he was born in Jamaica and entered the United States illegally in 2009. But Jamaican officials have denied any record that James was born or has citizenship there, and public records show that he has been unable to provide proof, the AP review found. Immigration authorities also alleged that he was in the country illegally after his applications for U.S. citizenship were rejected. ICE pointed to a criminal history that included a 2011 assault with a deadly weapon conviction that sent him to prison in Florida for five years. Records in that case and others list James as a U.S. citizen. ICE initiated removal proceedings in December 2025, issuing James a notice to appear in immigration court, while he was living in New York City. An immigration judge postponed the proceedings on Jan. 5, and agents arrested James after the hearing.

Other than James’s claims of Jamaican birth, ICE submitted evidence showing that he applied for a Jamaican national insurance registration card, which is available to noncitizens. Court records show that ICE’s lawyers and the immigration judge took James at his word when ordering his removal to Jamaica in April.

The maximum-security Bunker Hill facility recently began housing up to 1,000 ICE detainees under a state-federal partnership. The White House nicknamed it the “Speedway Slammer” because of Indiana’s motor-racing ties. The facility has faced complaints about overcrowding and medical neglect, and at least two detainees have died there. The partnership could generate $213 million in the first two years, including payments of $291 per detainee per day, more than three times ICE’s median bed rate of $92. Gov. Mike Braun’s office declined to comment on James’s case.

Unlike criminal defendants, immigration detainees are not guaranteed legal counsel. James initially represented himself, challenging his detention as unlawful while asserting Jamaican birth and Lebanese citizenship. He is now represented by the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit with a contract to represent indigent New York detainees. After the lawyers found the birth certificate and James’s mother in Florida, they filed a federal petition seeking his release on Aug. 19. They are also appealing his removal order to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The lawyers declined to comment and said James would not grant an interview.

The government has not acknowledged an error. In a Sept. 28 filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Irvin called James “a native of Jamaica and a citizen of Lebanon who entered the United States without admission.” Irvin argued that James’s citizenship claim should be decided in immigration court rather than by a federal judge. Leichty is expected to rule on the release petition.

Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE official who served as the agency’s chief of staff, said the case was complicated but that the evidence of James’s U.S. citizenship appeared strong. Wrongful detentions happen, she said, “but you’d like it to be very rare and for as brief a time as possible.” Fleischaker and other experts said Jamaican authorities would be unlikely to accept James if he is not a citizen there, but that ICE could still try to remove him to a third-party country. “I would worry that in their quest for deportation numbers, he is in the machine,” she said.

Records detailing James’s citizenship claim, like thousands of cases involving ICE detainees, are not available in the federal court system’s online database. The AP, with assistance from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a policy limiting access to those documents. A volunteer for Habeas Dockets, a nonprofit that works to make the records public, went to an Indiana courthouse to copy them at the AP’s request.

ICE has no authority to detain U.S. citizens, but the AP review said the agency has long done so, usually for hours or days, when officers mistake identities or cannot immediately verify citizenship. Immigration lawyers said a nearly 10-month improper detention would be rare but not unprecedented. The Associated Press concluded in its review: “The findings suggest that a cursory investigation, lax oversight, and possibly a refusal to admit a mistake may have ensnared a U.S. citizen for nearly all of 2026 as the Trump administration rushes to deport large numbers of people suspected of being in the country illegally.”