Gratien Milandou-Wamba said back home in the Republic of the Congo, he was tortured in retaliation for his brother's involvement in politics.
He fled to the U.S. in 2023, arriving in Maine on a tourist visa, and applied for asylum a few months later.
This year, on the morning of April 19, he was driving to work when ICE agents arrested him, saying he'd overstayed his visa. He eventually got a job as a corrections officer at Cumberland County Jail.
Reached on a scratchy phoneline from Strafford County Jail in Dover, New Hampshire, Wamba said he wasn't sure how he landed in ICE custody while following the normal pathway toward legal status.
"I'm so confused," he said. "I just want to be legal in this country, and I want to follow legal process."
One of Wamba's lawyers, Wade McCall, said the expired visa is a moot issue, given his request for asylum.
"By the time it expired, he had already begun the application process for asylum, and so the expired visa should not really be a problem," he said.
In a written statement on Monday, ICE did not mention Wamba's asylum claim, but the agency said officers arrested Wamba for "immigration violations" after he tried to purchase a firearm months earlier.
McCall said Wamba wasn't aware of immigration-related restrictions on firearm purchases.
"You're not supposed to try to buy a gun when you're here under a temporary visa and/or in the asylum process," McCall said.
McCall said Wamba's firearm application was ultimately denied. But McCall said the attempted purchase was one of the reasons he was denied bond, and worries it could come back to hurt Wamba in his asylum case as well.
Meanwhile, Wamba said he was trying to build a new life in the U.S., having followed the legal pathway to getting a work permit, a Social Security number and a job.
Now, though, he said he's been fired from his post at Cumberland County Jail, and is exhausted at being held in limbo, waiting for the government to make a decision in his case.
Since he left the Congo, Wamba said his family has continued to face violent retaliation for his brother's political work. And Wamba said if he were to be deported, his life would be in even greater danger than when he left.
"My life there will be in danger, more than before," he said.
His next court date is scheduled for October.
