Paul John Bojerski was born to Polish parents in a German refugee camp a year after World War II ended. His family legally emigrated to the United States in 1952 when he was five.
More than seven decades later, the 79-year-old Sanford grandfather – still a man without a country – found himself in legal limbo in the Alligator Alcatraz detention camp in the Everglades, picked up on a decades-old deportation order authorities had previously chosen not to enforce.
Bojerski’s case is complex and unusual – the most bizarre one his immigration attorney says he has handled in 30 years – but also part of the Trump administration’s widespread effort to deport millions of immigrants who it claims lack legal standing to be in the U.S, even those who lived here for decades with full knowledge of immigration officials.
The retired optician, taken into custody late last month, was recently moved to the Krome Detention Center in Miami and has a bond hearing on Nov. 18. His family worries his health is failing while he’s in custody and fears for his future.
“It’s devastating,” said his stepdaughter, Sandy Adams, 57.
Adams has moved in with her 82-year-old mother, who has been rocked by her husband’s incarceration. “It’s difficult to see her go through so much. She just sits by the phone, waiting for my Dad to call.”
ICE has offered no comments in response to questions from the Orlando Sentinel about Bojerski’s case.
Upon arriving in the U.S., Bojerski’s family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, which is where he grew up. But he did not become a citizen as a child for reasons that are not clear. Run-ins with the law led to a later deportation order, but it was not acted upon. His attempts to establish permanent residency also failed.
So he remained in the U.S., checking in with immigration officials when required.
In July, Bojerski went to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office for what he thought would be his usual routine visit. There he was told that if he didn’t voluntarily leave the country, ICE would deport him.
He was instructed to return to the ICE office in Orlando Oct. 30 with travel arrangements. But he could not make such plans as he has no passport and no country to return to, his lawyer said.
So he and six other relatives gathered at a Bahama Breeze restaurant in Sanford in late October for one last meal together before he had to report to ICE.
“At dinner, we laughed, told old stories, and just caught up on life,” Adams said. “I think every single one of us was somber inside, but we would not allow my dad to see it or feel it. We needed him to see us strong to help him remain strong.”
Bojerski attended the Oct. 30 meeting, then came out and told his wife he was being taken into custody pending a deportation hearing.
“He had been in there a long time and finally came out and said they’re deporting me and I just lost it,” said Gayle Bojerski, his wife of 37 years. “This was so unexpected.”
Since his eight-hour bus ride to Alligator Alcatraz, Bojerski’s health has gone downhill, his family said.
Prior to his incarceration he was able to walk on his own without assistance, but he is now using a wheelchair, Adams said. He has had three back surgeries for which he’s under continued medical care and was scheduled for a spinal procedure on Thursday, which he missed because of the detention. He has also been unable to get his regular medications.
Friday morning, he called to say he has bruises from the guards, Adams said.
“He fell out of his wheelchair and they left him on the cell floor for hours.” she said.
He told his family the detainees rarely get hot meals, a complaint shared by others held at Alligator Alcatraz.
Still, while he was at Alligator Alcatraz, Bojerski called his wife and stepdaughter daily. Now that he’s in Krome, the calls are less frequent because of the long lines to use the phone, they said.
“His phone calls are what keeps me going…as long as I can hear from him I know he’s OK,” his wife said.
Families and immigrant advocates have confirmed the unsafe, “inhumane” and unhygienic conditions at Alligator Alcatraz, including worm-infested food, overflowing toilets and lack of access to medical care.
State officials have disputed those descriptions.
David Stoller, Bojerski’s Orlando attorney, has sought to challenge his detention. His family has also reached out to U.S. Rep. Corey Mills, a Republican who represents Sanford, but to no avail.
Paul John Bojerski was born Zbigniew Janusz Bojerski – a name he swore he never used during his lifetime in the U.S. – in a displaced persons camp in Lubec, Germany in October 1946 to Polish nationals. The family emigrated to New York in January 1952, and he was admitted as a lawful permanent resident under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service records.
From there the story of his residency grows tangled.
He was arrested as a young man in 1966 for larceny and then again in 1967 for receiving stolen goods.
While he was incarcerated, an immigration hearing officer in 1968 ruled that those convictions were considered acts of moral turpitude that violated the country’s immigration laws. He ordered Bojerski to be deported.
But when both Poland, which was under communist rule at the time, and West Germany refused to take him, he was released from prison and remained in the United States.
Bojerski’s efforts to have the deportation order tossed out failed. Still, in 1969, immigration authorities issued another order that allowed him to be released from custody and apply for employment authorization, Stoller said.
Bojerski was in trouble with the law again after that, convicted in 1972 of rape and sentenced to three years in prison. He was released in 1975 and placed on parole for one year.
According to his wife, the rape charge was related to an incident at a fraternity party, where several other students sexually abused a young woman. Bojerski said he didn’t participate but was arrested along with the others. She said the other men took plea deals but he didn’t because he believed he did nothing wrong.
“He has never trusted the system since then,” Gayle Bojerski said.
After completing college Bojerski became an optician, working for the same company for more than 30 years. He eventually moved to Florida where he met Gayle in 1982, when she bought a pair of eyeglasses from him at the Montgomery Wards in Orlando.
Detail of a photo album page of the 1988 honeymoon of Gayle and Paul John Bojerski in Niagara Falls, copied on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. (Courtesy of Gayle and Paul John Bojerski / Copied by Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel)
Bojerski and Gayle married in 1988 and went to Niagara Falls in Canada on their honeymoon. Because he crossed the border then and again during a trip to Mexico, without questions from immigration officials, he and Stoller have argued that he had fulfilled the obligations of the old deportation order.
He made that case when he applied for permanent residency but immigration officials did not buy it. His request was denied, and in 2010 the government issued a new supervision order.
He has been following that order ever since, without issue, until July when the ICE told him he was to be kicked out of the country where he’s lived for over seven decades.
Whenever Bojerski calls, his family is his first priority, Adams said.
“Each call he asks about all of us first and keeps telling us he is OK.”
Gayle Bojerski said she is not opposed to the government’s deportation efforts as long as they focus on the most violent immigrants – drug dealers and other “bad people.”
But they shouldn’t deport the farmers who put food on our tables, she said, or people like her husband, despite his old criminal record.
“He’s always done everything they asked him to do,” she said.
