The New York Times has a new description for Nascimento Blair, a convicted drug dealer, kidnapper, and illegal alien; he is a “Jamaican transplant.” At least, they say, he was until he was sent back to Jamaica in February. The NYT never calls him what he was, an illegal alien.
Blair had been in the United States after coming on a nonimmigrant work visa in March 2004. He was here 21 years— so long that he has developed a “slightly Americanized accent,” and Jamaica does not feel like home anymore, according to New York Times Writer Luis Ferré-Sadurní and photographer Todd Heisler, who traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, to interview Blair.
The New York Times wants you to feel badly for Blair, and others like him — people in the U.S. illegally with a criminal history who are being sent back to their home country.
“It was his criminal past that had gotten him deported from the United States, where he had been rebuilding his life and seeking redemption,” their piece says. “He had earned two college degrees, started a trucking business, mentored people released from prison, cared for a fiancée with breast cancer, taken classes at Columbia University.”
Put another way, it was his illegal marijuana sales operation, and a 2006 conviction for kidnapping a teenager who allegedly stole marijuana from him in a case where Blair was accused of tying up the teen in an apartment, pistol whipping him, and seeking a $5,000 ransom from the victim’s family, and the resulting 2006 deportation order, that got him deported.
Also, he writes poetry.
In a tumultuous 2006 trial, Blair was found guilty of the kidnapping charge, but before deportation, he was to sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to the NYT piece, Blair assumed ICE would pick him up and deport him when he was released in 2020.
It is unclear why that didn’t happen, but New York is a sanctuary state which has been uncooperative with ICE, and it was during the COVID outbreak, when travel was limited.
Blair was sent back to Jamaica in February 2025 as ICE actively removes people who should have already left.
“Nascimento Blair is an illegal alien, convicted kidnapper, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 2008 he was issued a final order of removal,” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told The Federalist in a text. “Because of the previous administration’s open border policies, this criminal, illegal alien, was released into the streets of New York. Thanks to President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem, this kidnapper was arrested and is now out of our country. He was arrested on Feb. 3, 2025 and deported on Feb. 27, 2025. President Trump and Secretary Noem have made it clear that we are prioritizing arresting and deporting the worst of the worst. That includes convicted kidnappers. We are restoring common sense to our immigration system. Why does the New York Times continue to pedal sob stories about criminal, illegal aliens and ignore their victims?”
The NYT piece makes it clear Blair knew he didn’t belong in the U.S., “The deportation order loomed over Mr. Blair as he rebuilt his life after prison.”
But it was easy to stay after former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order in 2017 designating New York a sanctuary state.
The United States, including prison, has been very good to Blair. While in prison, he had the time and means to earn a bachelor’s degree from Mercy University and a master’s degree in leadership from the New York Theological Seminary, according to the NYT. He also married a Jamaican woman, fathered a child, and divorced, all while in prison.
He even made the news a few times complaining to the Associated Press in 2020 about prison conditions in the midst of COVID.
“It’s like we are expendable,” Blair said in that Associated Press interview, concerned that prisoners did not know who tested positive for COVID. “The last thing you want is to be around someone and not know that that person has it, because that’s a potential catastrophe.”
After he was released, instead of following the deportation order, Blair was asked to join other ex-convicts as a fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Justice. This connection may be where he found his free attorney, Bernard Harcourt, a Columbia law professor and a criminal defense lawyer who handled his deportation case.
But now Blair is living in his sister’s spare room in Jamaica, and the roof leaks.
“Jamaicans deported to the island, many of whom have criminal backgrounds, have long had to grapple with social stigma that stems from a widely held perception that deportees are unemployable, dangerous and destined to fuel crime,” the NYT piece says.
He is owed no sympathy. He owes the U.S. gratitude for the opportunities he was given after conviction. Blair knows he should have left the U.S. long ago. He is in Jamaica now because he made bad choices earlier in his life and often, like a firecracker that explodes in a bare hand, leaving permanent injury, bad choices follow us through life.
Trump’s policies didn’t send him home, Blair did, when he kidnapped that kid and sold pounds of weed in the U.S., breaking the rules of the work visa that allowed him into our beautiful country.
He chose not to be immediately accountable by self-deporting. But life has a way of catching up with you.
A man who earned (probably free) college degrees, found a love for poetry, and while behind bars came to understand his potential is unlimited, can certainly find his way in Jamaica.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
