Nelson Kargbo was 11 when he was forced at gunpoint to become a child soldier for a brutal revolutionary insurgency in the west African country of Sierra Leone.

He was injected daily with a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder called "Brown Brown," given marijuana before firefights, then sent into battle ahead of the adults to draw the enemy's gunfire. Sickly and left for dead by the rebels, he eventually was rescued. At the age of 15 he emigrated with his family to Minnesota where he received refugee status in 2000 and became a permanent resident in 2003.

Now 30, Kargbo sits in a Carver County jail, held for deportation for nearly two years by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Even though an immigration judge ruled two weeks ago that he cannot be deported because he will face torture in his native country, ICE is holding him for 90 days to review his case.

"I just want to get out and be with my family and get a job and support my family," Kargbo said in a telephone interview from jail.

Kargbo's status remains unclear because of a criminal history that his lawyers link to the trauma of his childhood in Sierra Leone. Last week a lawsuit was filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota and an immigration law clinic at the University of Minnesota known as the Center for New Americans, which contend the 90-day extension is cruel and unconstitutional.

Kargbo has schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to court testimony. His traumatic life, his lawyers say, led to a series of 11 criminal offenses, 10 misdemeanors and petty misdemeanors and one gross misdemeanor, beginning in 2004. His rap sheet includes convictions for possessing burglary tools, for which he got a 10-day sentence, shoplifting, being a public nuisance, four disorderly conduct arrests, terroristic threats and a DWI. He was arrested in 2013 for misdemeanor domestic assault of Marquette Ford, the mother of his three children.

Nelson Kargbo has held for deportation for nearly two years by Immigration and Customs.

Ford has asked the victim's advocate to cancel a no-contact order and urged that the domestic assault charge be dropped. "Nelson is the best thing for these kids, and I want him to be back with them," she wrote.

"When I look back on those years, I see myself as being young and stupid," Kargbo wrote in a legal memorandum he submitted in June. "I have grown up."

Deportation set in motion

The 2013 domestic assault charge set Kargbo's deportation in motion.

"Based on prior criminal convictions he was arrested and placed into removal proceedings," Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for ICE, wrote in an e-mail to the Star Tribune. "He was convicted of two 'crimes of moral turpitude' which render him removable from the United States and also make him subject to mandatory detention." Rusnok said that under federal law Kargbo is in mandatory detention as a deportable alien during a 90-day removal period.

"If Mr. Kargbo is unable to be removed from the United States by the expiration of his removal period, he will be afforded a custody review," said Rusnok. "Some of the factors considered during that review will be if he's a continued threat to the community or a potential flight risk; also considered is the likelihood of his removal from the United States."

The nearly two years in jail is out of proportion to any of the crimes he committed, argues Teresa Nelson, legal director for the local ACLU. Kargbo's lawyers say his detention violates ICE's own official guidelines. And they say it is already well established he is not a flight risk and there is no other country that he can be sent to.

Kate Evans, one of his attorneys at the university law clinic, said the two moral turpitude crimes are shoplifting and terroristic threats, for which he served only 14 days in jail. Last year, ICE looked at his case and decided he was not a danger to the community, she said.

She said the immigration judge determined Kargbo cannot be returned to Sierra Leone because of the country's hostility to mentally ill people. They are considered pariahs, medication is scarce, and there are no psychiatrists in the country, according to testimony in the case.

Before he was properly treated with medications when he was in ICE custody, he hallucinated and had suicidal thoughts, Evans said; he banged his head against the wall and drank shampoo to try and kill himself. "I'd see demons," Kargbo recalled in the interview.

Becky Cassler and Nicholas Hittler, two law students at the university law clinic, have spent hundreds of hours filing briefs on Kargbo's behalf.

"What makes me really sad was meeting his little kids who clearly miss their dad and talk about how he used to take them to the library," Cassler said.

Randy Furst • 612-673-4224 Twitter@randyfurst