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Dmitrii Georgiev said he was on vacation in Quebec when he mistakenly approached the Canadian-U.S. border. By his telling, he wasn’t trying to get into the United States. But that didn’t matter. He was arrested by border police and would spend the next two-and-a-half months in a black hole of ICE custody.

“For what I’m here?” Georgiev said in broken English over a scratchy phone call from the ICE lockup in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “I was not asking for asylum,” the Bulgarian explained. He just wanted to buy a plane ticket and go home.

It was mid-December when the 37-year-old called and recounted the events following his Oct. 4 arrest. He said he was desperate to get back to his family in Germany, where he’s lived for more than a decade. But he appeared to have fallen through the cracks of a federal detention system overwhelmed by the government’s mass deportation campaign.

Road signs in Stanstead, Quebec, inform travelers of an upcoming border crossing. (Simón Rios/WBUR)

Georgiev said he’d been staying with a friend in Montreal when he rented a car and headed to the border town of Stanstead, on his way to visit Niagara Falls. He said his GPS led him to a port of entry in Vermont, and by the time he realized that, it was too late.

“They say I am not allowed to come to United States. I say, ‘I know, I just want to turn back in Canada,’ ” he recalled.

Georgiev said the border agents wouldn’t let him turn around. He was taken into custody and spent the next many weeks shuttled to 10 different ICE facilities across seven states. He said he was forced to board roughly a dozen domestic ICE flights along the way.

“ I don’t feel like I am in democratic country,” Georgiev said from the jail in Plymouth.

“They give you a paper [saying] you’ll be deported in 30 days,” then they seem to change their mind, he said.

Georgiev’s story was strange, and other than the date of his arrest and the fact he was in ICE custody, much of it would be hard to confirm. Unlike local police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not required to release arrest details or reports, even when they detain people. Officials at the agency routinely ignore reporters’ requests, or offer brief, unsubstantiated reasons for arrests, as they eventually would in this case.

To learn more about what happened to Georgiev, WBUR spoke to two of his relatives back home, as well as a lawyer who interviewed him when he was first detained. His account of being moved about a dozen times squared with data from the group Human Rights First, which documented a massive increase in ICE’s domestic transfer flights around that time. The group tracked more than 1,000 of those flights in November, nearly four times the number last January, as President Trump took office.

Still, Georgiev’s case raised more questions: How does one mistakenly cross the border in a car? Why didn’t ICE let him turn back into Canada? And why couldn’t he just buy a plane ticket back to his country?

Hopes of deportation

Days after Georgiev’s arrest, Andy Pelcher, a lawyer with the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, interviewed him at an ICE facility in St. Albans. Pelcher said there was no reason for ICE not to grant what’s called “voluntary removal” and put him on a commercial flight home.

“There’s no criminal history, there were no federal charges brought at any given point, and the person is stating that he’s not seeking any form of relief” from deportation, Pelcher said.

He said he tried to get federal agents to initiate the process for voluntary removal, but he never heard back.

“ This paperwork is not forthcoming,” Pelcher said in December. “Dmitrii has actively requested it many, many times, only to be ignored by ICE agents.”

That’s despite immigration authorities pressuring detainees to accept voluntary removal, Pelcher said. And the Department of Homeland of Security is widely urging people to self-deport — lest they be "hunted down and deported" by ICE.

Georgiev said guards at the Plymouth jail were respectful, but as he was shuttled around the country by ICE, he felt he was treated like a murderer. He was shackled hand and foot while traveling, he said, had to sleep on concrete floors and often went hours without water.

“I feel like I am somewhere where rules are not working. Maybe in Russia or in Belarus — but I’m not in America.”

Dmitrii Georgiev

A month-and-a-half into his detention, Georgiev thought he might finally get home. He said ICE flew him to Texas to board a plane headed for Eastern Europe. But after the long journey to Texas — via Louisiana and Arizona — he learned the flight was overbooked. He said he was among more than 30 people returned to the ICE facilities they’d come from.

Back at the Plymouth County jail in mid-December, Georgiev said he was losing hope; he started to experience depression and hallucinations and could only sleep an hour or two at night. He said no one would tell him when he’d be deported, and after the flight from Texas fell through, he felt he couldn’t trust the officials anyway.

“I feel like I am somewhere where rules are not working,” he said in one of his calls from Plymouth. “Maybe in Russia or in Belarus — but I’m not in America.”

Pelcher, the immigration lawyer, said he couldn’t get responses from officials about Georgiev. ICE wasn’t responding to WBUR’s questions either. To further report out what happened would require a trip north.

The border line in Stanstead, Quebec

Signs beside the Haskell library point toward Canada, warning people not to step onto U.S. territory. (Simón Rios/WBUR)

The Canadian border town of Stanstead — population 2,800 — bills itself on its website as “one of the most interesting towns in the Eastern Townships.”

Perhaps the best known draw is the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a brick and stone Victorian building that straddles the U.S.-Canada line. That’s the site that had brought Georgiev to town.

At the library’s checkout desk, longtime volunteer Peter Lepine was feeling the Christmas season, greeting library-goers in French and English.

“Bonjour, madame,” he said, smiling at a woman wearing reindeer antlers.

As a Canadian, Lepine was also feeling outrage at an American president who has threatened to annex the country’s longtime ally to the north. For Lepine, Georgiev’s story was just more evidence of a nation gone mad.

“All I can say is the United States has lost their mind. Your government has gone completely berserk in every direction.”

Peter Lepine

“All I can say is the United States has lost their mind,” he said. “Your government has gone completely berserk in every direction.”

Lepine said more and more stories are emerging of foreign tourists who mistakenly approach the border and run afoul of U.S. immigration officials.

I told him about Georgiev — that after a visit to the library, his GPS had led him to the border. Lepine pulled up Google Maps on a tablet: destination Niagara Falls, Ontario. His eyes lit up.

“Oh yeah, that’s what he was doing,” he said. “The fastest route that his GPS would’ve given him would’ve been to go through Newport — in which case it would’ve taken him up to the port of entry.”

Library volunteer Peter Lepine pulls up Google Maps to see how GPS directions might lead you to a point of entry along the border. (Simón Rios/WBUR)

Georgiev had said Newport, Vermont, was the first place he was held, at a Customs and Border Patrol office, followed by transfers through Vermont and New Hampshire, until he ultimately arrived at the lockup in Massachusetts.

One of Lepine’s colleagues had a crucial tip on using Google Maps from the library: To keep the route within Canada, make sure to type in "Bibliotheque Haskell," (the Canada side) and not "Haskell Library," (the U.S. side).

Google Maps directions from the Haskell library to Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Leaving the library, there’s a road called Canusa Street, with Canada on one side and the U.S. on the other. Road signs point to a border crossing ahead and warn travelers against carrying cannabis.

Heading west, there’s the Beebe Plain port of entry, one of three ways to cross into the U.S. near Stanstead. At a hardware store, steps away from the Beebe Plain border crossing, firefighter Jamie Phaneuf said visitors end up unintentionally at points of entry all the time. That includes people coming into Canada from the States.

“People following their GPS come right up across,” Phaneuf said. He said sirens go off, and officials stop them with questions. When the response is, "Oh sorry, we’re following our GPS," travelers are typically free to move along.

But Phaneuf said not everybody gets the green light. If you’re from a foreign country, he said, “Of course they’re going to ask you more questions. Everywhere it happens, eh?”

The border agent killing in Derby, Vt.

The atmosphere at the border has become more tense since President Trump took office on Jan. 20. That day, a U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot and killed during a traffic stop just south of the Vermont border town of Derby.

The alleged shooter, an American from Seattle in her 20s, has been linked to a cult-like group called the Zizians, and is charged with murder of a federal law enforcement agent. Her partner was killed in the shootout, and she could face the death penalty.

“The killing of this agent brought more government officials here,” said Paula Halbedl, who owns the Derby Line Village Inn with her husband. “They have a heightened sense of urgency on everything all the time.”

Inn owner Paula Halbedl in Derby, Vermont, stands behind the bar. She counts Border Patrol agents among the regulars there. (Simón Rios/WBUR)

Halbedl said she’s had guests who mistakenly wandered across the border on foot and had to spend hours answering to authorities. She’s used to all kinds of people passing through the border region and her inn. Sometimes they’re families seeking asylum. Other times, she’s felt people were up to more nefarious activities. She counts border patrol agents among the regulars at her restaurant.

“ If you’re doing something that just isn’t like a normal routine, that’s their job to protect the border,” she said. “We want the right people here for the right reasons,” she said. “And we want to be safe.”

But Halbedl said it’s hard to imagine why officials would detain someone for months just for making the wrong turn.

ICE’s claims

Back in Boston, a new wrinkle appeared that called parts of Georgiev’s story into question. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson sent a statement saying Border Patrol arrested Georgiev after agents received a call about a ”suspicious individual with a backpack walking near the caller’s property,” and said Georgiev had drugs on him.

It’s unclear whether Georgiev was the individual who’d been reported — or what he was carrying when he was arrested.

Pelcher, the lawyer, said if Georgiev did have illegal drugs, it wasn’t enough for the feds to bring charges.

“Honestly, it sounds like he probably had personal medications on him, and DHS is trying to sound righteous” by saying he was caught with drugs, Pelcher said in a text message.

Homeland Security did not respond to follow-up questions about Georgiev’s case. In its statement, it said "DHS is working rapidly overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination — home."

Dmitrii Georgiev. (Courtesy Dmitrii Georgiev)

A few days before Christmas, Georgiev called from the Plymouth lockup. As the line connected, the usual audio recording warned the call could be monitored. Georgiev sounded upbeat and said he had news. He agreed to let me record. Then the line went dead.

The automated voice said, “The caller hung up.”

Just before the new year, Georgiev’s name disappeared from ICE’s detainee locator website, which is often the only way to learn where someone is being held. WBUR pressed DHS for details on whether he’d been deported, but officials just re-sent their original statement, stating he was in custody pending removal.

One of Georgiev’s family members said he’d flown to Poland and was on his way home to Germany in time for the new year.

Georgiev did not respond to multiple requests for comment after that, and WBUR was unable to ask him about ICE’s claim that he’d been carrying drugs.

That’s where the saga of a Bulgarian tourist snagged in the underworld of ICE runs out of thread. As in so many of these cases — when the agency carrying out mass deportations doesn’t have to explain its actions — there are things the public will probably never know.

For Pelcher, Georgiev’s case points to a mixture of "departmental incompetence" and an overloaded system. He said it’s part of a new era of immigration enforcement under Trump 2.0, and cited three other instances where people crossed into the U.S. unintentionally, only to end up in ICE custody.

“There’s no good reason for it," Pelcher said, "and it’s baffling to watch it unfold."

This segment aired on January 20, 2026.

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Simón Rios Reporter

Simón Rios is reporter, covering immigration, politics and local enterprise stories for WBUR.

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