(NEW YORK) — After more than 30 months in detention centers, Kelvin Silva was deported last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Dominican Republic. His mother, children and siblings continue to live in the U.S.

Silva, 45, legally moved to the United States when he was 11. His father was residing in the U.S. as a naturalized citizen, and Silva became a lawful, permanent resident. He had a Social Security card and paid taxes — until an immigration judge revoked his status.

“My belief was that I was a citizen through my father,” Silva previously told ABC News.

But that was not the case. Silva, whose parents were not married, never became a U.S. citizen. At the time he immigrated, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1940 was still the law. It barred children like Silva, whose parents were never officially married, from gaining citizenship status through their fathers.

That law was repealed by Congress in 2000, but the new legislation was not applied retroactively to people over the age of 18, which Silva was at the time.

“There’s this group of people that we maintain are unfairly being punished under the old rule,” Peter Isbister, one of Silva’s lawyers and a senior lead attorney with the Southeast Freedom Initiation at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News.

After his father died when he was a teenager, Silva said he became involved in illegal activities. He was convicted in 2013 for possession with intent to distribute marijuana and cocaine and sentenced to 127 months in federal prison. He earned his GED behind bars and completed a drug abuse program.

But two days before he was tentatively supposed to be released from the custody, ICE began his removal proceedings. That was on July 16, 2019. Since then, Silva remained in ICE custody as he continued to fight to earn his citizenship retroactively. Up until last week.

Silva, whose deportation proceedings began under former President Donald Trump, thought the Biden administration would be his “miracle.”

Just a few months after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, ICE issued an administrative stay in his case at the direction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Silva remained in the U.S.

But there were several times Silva thought he would be deported. He was “toyed with” multiple times, according to Isbister. On several occasions, he was put on a bus or a plane, expecting to be deported, only to be brought back to a detention center, his attorney said.

“He was shackled the whole time,” Isbister said of these moments.

But after more than 30 months in ICE custody, Silva’s hope vanished. He was deported on Feb. 15.

Silva, who has not been to the Dominican Republic since he was 11, has no immediate family members in the country, his family says.

ICE has previously told ABC News that Silva entered the U.S. legally but violated the terms of his admission with multiple drug convictions.

The agency said Silva is “an aggravated felon who falls within the current priorities for civil immigration enforcement arrest and removal set forth by the current administration.”

People who “pose a threat to public safety” are prioritized for deportation, an ICE spokesperson said.

According to Isbister, Silva, his family, and his attorneys are all disappointed in the Biden Administration, which had the discretion to keep him in custody as his case continued to be litigated.

A spokesperson for ICE did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on Wednesday.

“The divergence between the Biden administration’s rhetoric on racial justice and racial equity, and the positions that they took when they had a choice in this case – that’s what’s upsetting,” Isbister told ABC News.

“To have him removed in Black History Month, where with one hand the Biden administration is rightfully elevating the first black woman to the highest court in the land… and with the other hand, really not lifting a finger in the face of the Guyer rule and Kelvin’s removal,” Isbister said, referencing the 1940 law that deprived Silva of citizenship.

“When push comes to shove, the immigrant community comes out on the bottom,” Isbister said.

Despite his deportation, Silva’s attorney says he will continue to fight to be recognized as a U.S. citizen as his case is fought in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

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(NEW YORK) — New York City will pilot a program to install platform barriers at three subway stations, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials announced Wednesday, a month after a woman died when a stranger pushed her in front of an oncoming train.

The doors, which will create a barrier between the platform and track to prevent people from falling onto the tracks, will be installed at the Times Square station along the 7 line, the Third Avenue station on the L and the Sutphin Boulevard-JFK station stop on the E, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said on NY1’s “Mornings On 1” Wednesday.

“It’s going to take a while and we’re going to have to put the money together, which is a little complicated,” Lieber told NY1. “But our goal is to try out these technologies at different places in the system, including three stations, trying out platform doors.”

The pilot program is expected to cost more than $100 million, with the doors likely to be installed at the three locations in 2024, the MTA said. The project is scheduled to be discussed at Thursday’s MTA board meeting.

The announcement comes amid safety concerns in the nation’s largest public transit system. On Jan. 15, Michelle Go, 40, died after she was shoved in front of an oncoming train on the N/Q/R/W line inside the Times Square-42nd Street subway station in what police said was an unprovoked attack.

Following Go’s death, several city officials, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, called on the MTA to install the platform barriers, which are used in transit systems in cities including Paris, London and Hong Kong, as well as along the John F. Kennedy International Airport AirTrain.

Previously, the MTA had said installing platform barriers would be prohibitively expensive and complicated due to the age of the subway system. Last month, the agency released a 3,000-page report from 2020 that found that most of the city’s 472 stations can’t accommodate the protective barriers and that it would cost about $7 billion to install them at the 128 stations that could.

In recent weeks, though, Lieber said the MTA was revisiting the issue. On Wednesday, he said the MTA identified the three stations in the pilot as locations “where the engineering does work.”

Levine called the pilot program a “huge win for safety & efficiency.”

“Truly a milestone in the history of NYC’s subways. Congrats to all who fought for this,” he said on Twitter.

From January 2021 to July 2021, 37 people died after getting struck by a train, according to the MTA.

In 2021, 30 people were pushed onto the tracks, according to the New York Police Department’s public information office. So far this year, as of Jan. 23, five people have been pushed onto the tracks, the NYPD said. A further breakdown of injuries or fatalities was not available.

Among other safety measures, the MTA is looking at piloting new technologies, including thermal sensors and lasers, that would detect when someone has fallen onto the tracks, Lieber said.

The city also recently launched a subway safety plan in response to a spike in crime that involves sending more police, mental health clinicians and social service outreach workers into the subways.

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