He Fled Death Threats for Being Gay, Applied for Asylum and Married a U.S. Citizen. ICE Arrested Him Anyway

by Gwynne Hogan

This article was originally published on June 27 3:35 p.m. ED by THE CITY

When Fitz Smith, 43, first met Mamadou on the dating app Grindr in December 2023, he immediately saw a younger version of himself. 

Mamadou, then 27, had fled Guinea just after his father, a conservative imam, learned he was in a relationship with a man. Sex between people of the same gender is punishable with prison time in Guinea, and vigilante violence is common. Fearing his father would have him killed, Mamdou left overnight, made his way to the United States and applied for asylum. 

Smith had undertaken a similar journey decades earlier, fleeing his home country of Jamaica to apply for asylum and eventually become a U.S. citizen. 

“When folks talk about cats having nine lives, I feel like I have 12,” Smith said. “He’s coming from the same train of thought that I’ve escaped.”

Over a year and a half, their relationship grew deeper. They got married on June 3, planned to move in together in July and were even talking about adopting children. 

But the couple’s future is now on hold. 

Mamadou was arrested by masked federal agents on June 23 after stepping out of an immigration courtroom at 290 Broadway, moments after an immigration judge dismissed his asylum claim despite his pleas that returning to Guinea would amount to a death sentence. 

THE CITY is withholding Mamadou’s full name for his safety if he is deported. 

“How much more can someone suffer just to find peace?” Smith asked, speaking on the phone to THE CITY in the evening after Mamadou’s arrest. “I have to fulfill my promises to him that I would never leave his side. So that’s what I’m really trying to do.”

Spokespeople for DHS and ICE didn’t return requests for comment right away on his arrest. ICE has previously defended the courthouse arrests and the dramatic expansion of expedited removal under President Trump.

“ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been,” an unsigned statement from DHS read last month, when they first rolled out the aggressive strategy of nabbing people outside immigration courtrooms. “If they have a valid credible fear claim, they will continue in immigration proceedings, but if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to a swift deportation.”

Mamadou’s arrest was one of dozens if not hundreds that have occurred over the past month inside three Lower Manhattan immigration courthouses. 

In an unprecedented maneuver, the Trump administration has been targeting migrants who entered the country to seek asylum in the past two years and moving them into an expedited removal process where they don’t get to plead their case before an immigration judge. 

While an actual number of courthouse arrests is not available, attorneys and local activists observing the courthouses say ICE has only increased its arrests there in recent days, taking dozens of people attending routine hearings every day this week. 

The tactic is among increasingly aggressive actions President Donald Trump has turned to to fulfill his campaign promise of mass deportation, with ICE arrests and the number of people in detention both soaring since he took office. 

While the Trump administration claims it’s targeting the “worst of the worst,” an increasing number of those people arrested and detained have no criminal record. 

That Mamadou’s arrest came just days before massive celebrations in Manhattan to cap off Pride month was particularly painful for Phil Smrek, 61, whose Williamsburg apartment Mamadou had been living in. Smrek and Smith are working with New Sanctuary Coalition, an immigration rights organization, pledging to fight for Mamadou’s release and against his possible deportation. 

“While the gay community may be celebrating their rights and pride this weekend they should be aware that, like Mamadou’s right to due process, it can be taken away in the blink of an eye,” Smrek said. 

‘He Came Here to Love Somebody and Be Loved’

Mamadou entered the United States in December 2023, along with more than 200,000 others that month, as the number of migrants crossing the border scaled to unprecedented heights. He stayed with a friend of his family in The Bronx until that person realized he was gay and threw him out.

He then spent several nights sleeping on the streets or in the subway system. On one of their early dates, Smith realized he had no place to stay. 

“We walked for over five hours to different shelters to try to check him in and we couldn’t find anywhere,” Smith recalled. 

Because of his own tight living arrangement, sharing a one-bedroom apartment with his parents — with whom he reconciled after an initial rupture when he came out years earlier — Smith couldn’t host him. 

He recalled thinking, “this is not the way life should be,” for Mamadou. Smith had also been homeless as well in his first years in New York City, and knows what it was like to have no safe place to go.

“It’s just like that stuck in my mind from day one,” he said. “I would never leave his side.”

Eventually Mamadou entered the city’s migrant shelter system and did several 30-day stints under strict time limits imposed by Mayor Eric Adams as the migrant shelter population ballooned to more than 50,000 people. He spent time at emergency shelters near JFK airport, on Randall’s Island and elsewhere. When the wait for a new shelter cot at times stretched for days, Smith put Mamadou up in a hostel. 

Despite the challenges, the romance blossomed. The 15-year age difference between the two men was new for Smith, who had just ended a decade-long relationship, but Mamadou reassured him. 

“He was like, ‘Fitz I’m 27, but I’m an old soul.’”

But both men were still deeply religious — Mamadou a devout Muslim and Smith a practicing Christian — and they bonded over their desire to maintain their faiths, despite being ostracized by parts of their respective religious communities for being gay. They spent time together at Smith’s church in East New York or at mosques Mamadou liked to worship at in Prospect Heights and Harlem. 

“We kind of understand the pressure that religion has placed,” he said. “When it comes down to sexuality, you can’t really live in your own truth. Every day you’re really taking a chance at life. We kind of connected because of some of those issues.”

They had joyful moments too. The couple celebrated Mamdou’s first Pride last summer, attending parades together in Manhattan and Queens. Smith said it seemed to boggle Mamadou’s mind: “He just stood in one place and observed. He was in a trance state of mind.” 

Smith took Mamadou this spring to the Metropolitan Opera House to see his first opera, a rendition of “La Bohème.” 

“He kind of took it in awe,” Smith recalled. 

Smith, the director of a community health nonprofit based in Western New York, works mostly remotely. The two spent a happy summer together last year living in a house in Buffalo that Smith owns, where they planned to eventually relocate full time. 

“It was beautiful,” he said. “We were just living a regular quiet life.”

But their quiet life was short-lived. The house had a heating issue that made it unlivable that winter so the two returned to New York City, and had to live separately again. Another friend who’d also met Mamadou through social media offered to put him up. 

“If you can get yourself back to New York, I go, you can stay with me and then we’ll get you sorted out, right?” recalled Smrek. “And so what happens is he turns up on my doorstep.”

While the two initially met on a dating app months earlier, it was instantly clear to Smrek this would be a platonic relationship. “My fatherly instincts just sort of kicked in,” Smrek said. “As an older gay man, I know what it’s like to be young and to have to deal with your sexuality and to embrace that identity.”

Mamadou has lived with Smrek since last fall, enrolling in English classes at Long Island University and working to get his immigration papers in order. He got work authorization through his asylum application and found a job at a restaurant in Williamsburg while taking a training course to become a security guard. 

“He came here just so that he could love somebody and he could be loved and not have to worry about being put in jail or, you know, being ostracized by his family,” Smrek said. 

Smith said while Mamadou was still working through a lot of trauma, he had slowly started to open up, and when the two attended Queens Pride on June 1, two days before they got married, he got dressed up and was much looser, dancing and waving rainbow flags throughout the day. “He was a queen,” Smith said. “I don’t call him Mamadou, I say mama.”

‘We Put Our Faiths Together’

A few weeks ahead of Mamadou’s immigration court hearing, word began to spread about the ICE arrests happening inside courthouses and Smith and Mamadou deliberated about what he should do. 

“I don’t not want you to go because this is a great possibility that they will take you, but then if we don’t go, there’s a deportation order that’s gonna be against you,” Smith said. “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. But we put our faiths together.”

A day before the hearing, Smith and Smrek, each having heard about the other from Mamadou for months, met for the first time.

“We were walking along,” Smrek recalled, and “Mamadou was very happy and he said, ‘you know, I had a dream that the two of you would meet.’”

The next day, Mamadou wore a thick suit jacket for his hearing, despite the sweltering heat. Smrek recalled asking him why.

“In detention they don’t give you any blankets, so this would be my blanket,” Mamadou replied. “I didn’t really think too much about it, you know.”

Mamadou reported to court along with Smith and Smrek and several other of his friends and supporters from his time living in New York City. The masked agents lining the hallways unnerved the group. “They’ve been dispatched,” Smrek recalled thinking. “Their job today is to, you know, nab people.”

Before Immigration Judge Shirley Lazare-Raphael, Mamadou described his fear of being murdered for his sexuality if he returned to Guinea and reiterated his desire to fight for his asylum claim. Smith and Mamadou told the judge they were recently married and showed her their marriage license. 

The government’s attorney moved to drop the deportation against him anyway, which would also end his asylum claim — a precursor to arrests the Trump administration has used in countless cases over the past month, THE CITY has reported. 

Lazare-Raphael, who has one of the lowest rates of granting asylum cases among New York City immigration judges, moved to dismiss Mamadou’s case despite his objections. The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration courts, didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

“Mamadou is literally pleading for his life and the judge says I think the government has met its burden of proof,” Smrek said. “You could just see him beyond melting in front of that judge because he knew that nothing he would say could possibly save him.”

As the friends left the courtroom Mamadou was surrounded by masked federal agents who whisked him away. He spent two nights on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where ICE has been holding people who have been sleeping on the floor or on benches as the agency struggles to transfer them to detention centers as quickly as they’re arresting them. 

While ICE’s online database of detainees says families can call 26 Federal Plaza for visiting hours, the person answering the line says no visits are allowed. Late Wednesday night, Mamadou was sent to Nassau County jail, where people can stay for up to 72 hours while ICE figures out where to send them next. Smith tried to visit Mamadou there on Friday afternoon and was turned away by guards who said ICE detainees aren’t allowed visitors. A spokesperson for the jail couldn’t be reached right away. 

He has been able to call Smrek and Smith several times since his arrest and, Smrek said, “The crazy part, and this is why he’s so amazing, he didn’t sound distressed, he didn’t sound like he was angry.” 

Instead, Smrek continued, “he almost sounded like himself, while the rest of us are just all kind of falling apart.”

Smith said he’s been sending Facebook messages even though Mamadou has no way to read them. “I know you can’t read this now but I am working hard to get you out,” one such message read. “Phil is working hard as well. I pray for you.”

Smith said he was haunted by the final words Mamadou whispered to him inside the courtroom moments before he was arrested. 

“‘Fitz, they’re going to take me, you’re going to let them take me?’” Smith said. “It rings in my head even now. I couldn’t help him.”

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