Paramjit Singh arrived in the United States with a green card over 30 years ago, hungry to build a family and his own empire of gas stations in Indiana. Now, he’s in a county jail in Kentucky going blind from a rapidly advancing brain tumor, separated from his family and any advanced medical care. He’s been there for almost two months.

“Last thing I heard from him was, ‘I think I’m just going to give up. I’m never getting out of here,’” his niece, Kirandeep Kaur, told The Intercept. She calls him almost every day, but she said he doesn’t talk much anymore. He’s lost over 20 pounds, his family said, and he fears he will die in detention.

The government’s argument to deport Singh appears to be built on sloppy research. The Department of Homeland Security misclassified him, his lawyer argues, as “subject to removal,” dug up his 25-year-old theft conviction, and, when an immigration judge found that Singh had done his time, pointed to a forgery case — which doesn’t seem to exist.

Singh represents one example in a growing trend of legal, document-bearing immigrants caught up in the Trump administration’s weaponized deportation system — and he’s one of the rare few relatively well-positioned to fight it. His gas stations gave him a lucrative business portfolio: sixteen of them, plus a distribution center and an oil-supplying truck company, which earn him a yearly income in the hundreds of thousands. So when an immigration judge found that he should be released on a $10,000 bond on August 25, his family was able to post it. But the Trump administration is using a dated mechanism called an automatic stay to override his immigration judge’s decisions, keep him locked up, and push for deportation.

His removal proceeding is scheduled for Monday, September 29.

“Paramjit Singh, a criminal illegal alien from history with a previous conviction for larceny, is being held in ICE custody,” wrote DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin in a statement to The Intercept. McLaughlin did not respond when asked to clarify if she was referring to Singh’s past theft conviction, DHS’s claim that he had a forgery conviction, or an additional criminal allegation.

Singh’s family has tried and failed to have him released on humanitarian grounds, to treat his growing brain tumor. In response to queries about his condition, McLaughlin said: “This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

The last time Singh entered the United States, his tumor was under control, and he didn’t expect to have any issues at the port of entry. He had been in and out of the country on yearly trips to India throughout the three decades he’s held a lawful permanent resident green card. He was returning from one such visit on July 30, when he was pulled into an immigration room at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

The grounds for his detention were laid out in smudged black ink on a “Notice........

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