Born on a US military base, the son of a US citizen father serving in the Army, Jermaine Thomas never considered he might not be American.

A month ago, he found himself shackled at the wrists and ankles and forced aboard a flight for Jamaica, his father’s birthplace and a country Thomas had never been to before.

“It’s too hard to put in words,” Thomas told CNN. “I just think to myself, this can’t really be happening.”

He is legally stateless, he told CNN. He is not a citizen of the US, although his father was a US citizen; Germany, where he was born at a US military hospital; Jamaica, his father’s homeland; or Kenya, where his mother was born.

Thomas, 39, says he spoke to CNN from a homeless shelter in Kingston, Jamaica, a city where he now finds himself stranded hundreds of miles away from his friends and family after an arrest for criminal trespass led to him being transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.