When April Watkins sees a call coming in from her fiancé, she always answers on the first ring.

“Hey, pretty girl! How are you doing?” Godfrey Wade tells Watkins, who responds with a slightly embarrassed laugh, in a recent call.

“Thank you for keeping the household together,” Wade adds.

“That is a blessing.”

“Don’t be trying to make me emotional,” Watkins blushes.

Wade smiles broadly over the WhatsApp video call, with the beauty of Jamaica’s landscape spreading out behind him. These calls are as close as he has been to his house in Georgia for more than six months.

“I do miss the USA,” Wade tells CNN. “That’s my home for 52 years.”

On September 13, Wade was pulled over on suspicion of not using a turn signal in the north Georgia city of Conyers, and subsequently arrested when an officer saw he didn’t have a driver’s license, a police report shows. That triggered an immigration inquiry that quickly turned into a downward spiral: detention, depression and ultimately deportation on February 5 to his native country, which he’d left with his mother as a teenager.

Wade, who lived decades in the US as a lawful permanent resident and served in the US Army, is one of more than 600,000 people the White House says have been deported during President Donald Trump’s second term. While the administration has repeatedly pledged to focus on removal of the “worst of the worst,” Wade’s family is appealing his deportation, saying the 65-year-old military veteran doesn’t deserve to be forced out of the life he built, changing their own lives with it.

“You know, mistakes of the past don’t always need to become present,” Watkins says in their Georgia home, where three of Wade’s adult children and two grandchildren – who live nearby – regularly gather for meals. “He’s not one of those violent criminals or anything like that.”

Wade’s attorney says what they now want is the one thing he hasn’t had over the two-decade saga leading to his removal: a hearing.

“We’re not asking for him to be given his green card back and sent on his way,” his immigration attorney Tony Kozycki said in an interview. “We’re only asking for his day in court.”

Wade served overseas in the Army

Wade says he first arrived in the US from Jamaica with his family as a legal immigrant with permanent resident status in 1975. He enlisted in the Army at age 22, and within a year served as a unit supply specialist in Germany. Wade earned a Good Conduct Medal, which the Army awards in part for exemplary behavior.

After nearly four years of service, Wade was honorably discharged in 1987 under an early transfer program that was part of a military reduction in force enacted that year.

The Biden administration issued an order in 2022 that “a noncitizen’s U.S. military service … is a significant mitigating factor that must be considered” when potentially removing a veteran from the country. That policy was rescinded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons last year, although the agency still permits its personnel to take military service into consideration.

“I’m asking that my service be taken into account,” Wade told CNN affiliate WXIA.

Deportation was based on two misdemeanor convictions

The events that ultimately led to Wade being deported began in 2006, when he was charged with misdemeanors – simple assault, trespass and several counts of reckless conduct – stemming from what Wade says was an argument with his ex-wife as they were going through a divorce.

Court documents say Wade was charged based on throwing dishes and pots and pans on the floor and “slapping milk off the table.”

Ella Wade, who was 8 years old at the time and is listed as one of the victims of the reckless conduct charges, says her father’s actions were a mistake, but do not represent the man she knows now.

“He’s a man of faith who can own up to everything that he’s done,” she says.

Wade’s attorney says Wade didn’t lay a hand on anyone and feels the situation got out of hand.

“They really overcharged him on this incident,” Kozycki argued. “They’re trying to get you to make a plea.”

Wade did negotiate a plea – guilty to one count each of simple assault and reckless conduct – according to court documents. That resulted in 12 months’ probation and a violence counseling class, according to Kozycki.

In 2007, Wade faced another charge after bouncing a check of just over $500 to tax authorities in Douglas County, Georgia, to renew the registration on his vehicle.

His attorney argues it was unintentional, saying Wade had no reason to think he could get away with short-changing a government agency that had his home address. The charging document shows Wade had handwritten his home and work phone numbers on the check.

After being briefly jailed, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor deposit account fraud, and was sentenced to time served and ordered to pay restitution and a fine.

In both cases, Kozycki said, Wade didn’t fight the charges because he was trying to own up to his mistakes and move past them, but says he was never told that his criminal record could endanger his green card.

“He was not properly advised about immigration consequences,” Kozycki said.

In June 2012, the Department of Justice scheduled a hearing for removal proceedings against Wade because of the assault and account fraud convictions. Wade and his attorneys say he didn’t know about this at the time and wouldn’t for years.

Documents on file obtained by Wade’s legal team show an immigration court sent several notices of the removal hearing to an address where Kozycki says Wade was not living. They were sent back by the Postal Service marked “Return to Sender” without a forwarding address.

In July 2014, the court sent a letter advising that the removal order was approved in absentia. That notice, too, was returned.

“He has never been in front of a judge,” Kozycki said.

In 2022, Wade, still unaware of the immigration proceedings, applied to renew his green card, but Covid-related backlogs delayed the decision, Kozycki said. Wade also was unable to renew his driver’s license around this time, since the state required a current green card, the lawyer said.

Wade’s green card renewal finally was denied in December 2024, and the denial gave his 2014 removal order being given as the reason, according to Kozycki.

“The denial was the first time he became aware that a removal order existed,” Kozycki said.

Wade then hired an immigration attorney, who tried to get Wade’s full immigration file to determine the reason for the removal order.

“My understanding is that the attorney was still waiting on portions of that file at the time Mr. Wade was arrested in September 2025,” said Kozycki, whom Wade hired after the arrest.

In a statement to CNN, the Department of Homeland Security called Wade “a criminal illegal alien” who “received full due process.”

“He will no longer (be) able to terrorize Americans,” DHS said.

Wade says he tried to renew green card and driver’s license

Wade acknowledges driving without a license, with the green card issues blocking his renewal, but says he needed to have a way to get to work.

“I tried my hardest best to get that license renewed,” Wade says. “Every day I would leave that house, I was so stressed out. I tried my very best.”

Turning 65 is a big milestone for most people – the beginning of a transition to spending more time with family. For Wade it was the beginning of a whole new life away from his family.

“I miss everyone,” he says.

Wade tries to keep up his spirits as his legal case drags on, something that is made a little easier by the deep blue skies and verdant mountains that surround his new home in Saint Mary Parish not far from the Caribbean Sea.

“It’s very beautiful,” Wade says with a broad smile.

His positive spirit is what helps keep his daughter Christian going as she continues to advocate for his return.

“Every moment I talk to him, he’s always comforted me, and I’m not the one detained,” she says in an interview alongside her family at Watkins’ home.

The sunshine and fresh sea air around his uncle’s farm are slowly starting to clear up a raspy voice and persistent cough he says he developed during his five months in detention.

But for Wade and his family, the island beauty has become a gilded cage.

“He’s in a better place than detention,” Watkins says. “You can go visit him, but he’s still not back with family yet.”

During his months of uncertainty in custody, Wade kept himself engaged by drawing portraits of his fellow detainees, starting a Bible study and making craft bracelets with his kids’ names, which they still wear every day, his family says.

Watkins and the children were able to see Wade for a week in Jamaica earlier this year, but it is too expensive for them to make regular trips.

“It’s something that hits you over and over, no matter how many times we talk to each other,” Watkins said.

Wade and Watkins have been together since 2018, first meeting at an Atlanta Braves game where Godfrey was working as a chef. As they later got to know each other, his pickup line was memorable, Watkins said.

“That was his way to get me out on a date, was if he won a game of Scrabble,” says Watkins.

He won that game. And hundreds since, she says.

Although they have been engaged and living together for years, the green card problems complicated their plans to get married, Watkins says. But she has become close to Wade’s children and grandkids and was the first person to arrive when Wade was pulled over and told he would go to jail.

“When you hear that, it’s like a gut punch because you don’t know what to do,” Watkins says. “You’re helpless.”

Wade’s family tries to stay close with regular virtual visits

The smell of Jamaica quickly fills Watkins’ home in Covington, Georgia, as three of Wade’s children – daughters Christian and Ella along with son Zoe – arrive for a potluck dinner.

But the tempting scent of brown stew chicken and rice is blocked out for the moment as attention focuses on the other side of the room, where Godfrey Wade’s kids circle around the phone for another WhatsApp call.

“Look at you guys!” Wade beams as his children describe their meal. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Proud of you, too,” says Ella.

Two of Wade’s young grandchildren gather around the table as everyone tucks in to their salads. When the adults talk about the immigration battle around the little girls, it is with care.

“They don’t know what happened,” Christian Wade says. “They just know he moved.”

Wade served state lawmakers until his arrest

Despite his green card expiring several years ago, Wade managed to continue finding work, getting gigs as a designer and tennis coach.

“He’s a tennis snob,” Zoe Wade laughs. “If you go to a tennis community, there’s a chance that somebody knows my dad there.”

But Godfrey Wade says his true “love language” is food, and much of his living was made cooking. Georgia lawmakers were some of his best customers, working as a chef in a state-run café across the street from the state Capitol.

“I’m in those corridors every day,” Wade says. “I see the legislators. I feed these guys!”

The Georgia Building Authority, which handles staffing for the Capitol and state buildings surrounding it, confirmed to CNN Wade worked for it through a temp service for nearly three years. His last day on the job was the day before the arrest that threw his life into chaos.

Because he was already under a removal order, Wade never had an immigration hearing, going first to the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia before being transferred to Louisiana and then flown back to the nation he hadn’t seen in a half-century, Kozycki says.

“I didn’t have any documents because when ICE picks you up, you are deported in the exact same clothes you are picked up in,” Wade says.

Ironically, he says he’s having almost as much trouble establishing his legal paperwork in his native land as he did in the US.

“Nothing happens fast in Jamaica,” he says. “It’s an island vibe.”

As to why he never sought to become a naturalized US citizen, especially while serving in the military, he told WXIA that he was “ill informed,” and that he thought it would mean abandoning his Jamaican heritage.

“Back then, I didn’t understand,” he told WXIA. “I could have avoided all of this, but I didn’t do it.”

Family asks DHS to reconsider Wade’s deportation

US Rep. David Scott, who serves Wade’s district in Georgia, wrote a letter to DHS asking it to reconsider his case. Scott’s office did not respond when CNN asked whether it had ever received a response from the DHS.

Kozycki, the attorney who took Wade’s case after first seeing news coverage about it, says the issue of how Wade and other immigrants have been treated inspired him to announce a run for Congress last month.

“This case brought together concerns I had already been wrestling with, but this was what pushed me to step forward,” he told CNN.

It is not clear when Kozycki will get an answer to the family’s appeal, which asks for an immigration judge to hold a hearing on Wade’s case. He says a backlog at the Board of Immigration Appeals and that fact that Wade is already out of the country means the appeal could drag on for years.

In the meantime, they are asking the DHS to agree to let a judge reopen the case sooner, but the department’s legal team would have to agree to it.

The legal fight over Wade’s legal status is entering Month Eight, but his family measures it mostly in missed milestones. First, no Thanksgiving together. Then the little girls wondering why Granddad wasn’t there for Christmas.

Most recently, it was the first day of spring.

“And I know him,” Watkins says. “We would be dancing, and he would be cooking.”

Soon, Watkins will be celebrating her 50th birthday and the completion of her doctoral degree in education, knowing the fight to bring her fiancé back home will probably still not be over.

Watkins’ home is still filled with signs of Godfrey Wade, like the curtains and pillows he designed and made for the living room, and his beloved deluxe Scrabble game that sits unused next to the loveseat.

“I had these plans. What are we going to do?” Watkins asks.

For now, their wait continues, with Jamaica’s sunny weather and Wade’s sunny disposition giving them hope.

“I still believe in the American Way,” says Wade, “and there’s no hard feelings because I know justice is going to be done.” (CNN)

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