NRI PULSE STAFF REPORT
Washington, D.C., November 6, 2025:Two U.S. courts have ordered immigration authorities not to deport 64-year-old Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, an Indian-origin man who spent more than 43 years in prison before his murder conviction was overturned earlier this year.
Vedam, who was nine months old when his parents brought him legally from India to the United States, grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, where his father taught at Penn State University. He has lived in America nearly his entire life and was a lawful permanent resident at the time of his arrest in the early 1980s.
His 1983 murder conviction in the death of a friend was vacated in August 2025 by a Pennsylvania court, which found that crucial ballistics evidence had been suppressed during the original trial. Vedam was released from state prison in October after spending more than four decades behind bars.
However, upon his release, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took him into custody, citing an old deportation order linked to a 1984 drug-related plea that ran concurrently with his life sentence. That decades-old order triggered new proceedings that could have sent Vedam to India — a country he has not known since infancy.
Attorneys for Vedam filed emergency motions to block his removal, arguing that deporting him would amount to “a second injustice” against a man already exonerated after more than four decades of wrongful incarceration. They maintained that the government should not punish him twice for crimes that no longer stand and that he deserves the chance to rebuild his life in the only country he has ever known.
On Monday, a U.S. immigration judge issued a stay preventing ICE from deporting him while his case is under review by the Board of Immigration Appeals. A federal district court in Pennsylvania later reinforced that stay, directing ICE not to proceed with removal until further hearings are held.
ICE has declined to comment on pending litigation but has stated that Vedam’s deportation proceedings are based on the drug conviction, not the overturned murder charge. The agency maintains that it must enforce existing removal orders unless a court directs otherwise.
Vedam is currently being held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana. His legal team is seeking to have the old deportation order vacated entirely and to restore his permanent resident status.
For Indian Americans, Vedam’s case highlights the intersection of wrongful imprisonment and immigration law — raising questions about whether the justice system can truly make amends for a man who spent most of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit, only to face exile from the country he has always called home.
Photo credit: bellisariostudentmedia.psu.edu/Vedam family.
