Forced from Bhutan, deported by the US: these stateless Himalayan people are in a unique limbo

Tamara Ceaikovski

Beldangi refugee camp, Nepal CNN  —  More than two dozen refugees from Bhutan have been left in a unique legal limbo after they were deported by the US back to the tiny Himalayan nation they once fled – only for it to reject them a second time. The refugees are Lhotshampa, a Nepali-speaking ethnic minority who were expelled from Bhutan in the 1990s. After decades in refugee camps in eastern Nepal, more than 100,000 of them were legally resettled in the US, Australia, Canada and other countries