Phillip James, a 39-year-old diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, has been held at ICE's Speedway Slammer in Indiana for nearly a year while immigration authorities seek to deport him to Jamaica.

According to The Associated Press, James's mother, his lawyers, and public records say he was actually born in Orange County, Florida, in 1987 to a US citizen mother.

ICE has no legal authority to detain US citizens, and its wrongful detentions are usually brief — lawyers say a nearly 10-month improper detention would be rare but not unprecedented. The government has not acknowledged any error.

The case turned on James's own insistence that he was born in Jamaica — a claim medical experts cited by The Associated Press describe as a grand delusion of his schizophrenia, including his belief he is the illegitimate son of a former Jamaican prime minister.

Jamaican officials have denied any record of his birth or citizenship there.

Northwestern professor Jacqueline Stevens, who has studied ICE's wrongful detention of citizens for two decades, told the AP the case is 'not a one-off' but 'a feature, not a bug' of how ICE handles citizenship claims, with evidence consistent with deportation treated as accurate and contradicting evidence treated as fraudulent.

According to The Associated Press, James was issued a US passport in 2008 by submitting a Florida birth certificate and held a passport for 15 years, later receiving a second one under a court-ordered name change.

A 1988 paternity court record obtained independently by the AP matches the birth certificate's details. The Department of Homeland Security told the AP the passport was issued on a 'fraudulent birth certificate' but provided no proof.

The AP notes it filed a lawsuit with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to access the detention records, which a Habeas Dockets volunteer copied from an Indiana courthouse.

James sits in the Miami Detention Center in Bunker Hill, Indiana — a maximum-security prison the White House nicknamed the Speedway Slammer — which The Associated Press reports has faced complaints about overcrowding and medical neglect, with at least two detainee deaths.

The arrangement could generate $213 million for Indiana in two years at $291 per detainee per day, over three times ICE's median bed rate, according to the AP.

Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE chief of staff, told the AP that while wrongful detentions happen, 'you'd like it to be very rare,' warning: 'in their quest for deportation numbers, he is in the machine.'

James's lawyers at the Bronx Defenders, who found his birth certificate and mother in Florida, filed a federal petition for his release on Aug. 19 and are appealing his removal order to the Board of Immigration Appeals, per The Associated Press.

US District Judge Damon Leichty is expected to rule on the release petition. A Sept.

28 filing by Assistant US Attorney Brian Irvin still called James 'a native of Jamaica,' arguing his citizenship claim belongs in immigration court. Experts told the AP that Jamaica would likely not accept James if he is not a citizen there, but ICE could try removing him to a third-party country.