Henderson man claiming to be citizen set for deportation over previous drug trafficking conviction

When Michael Schulze stepped outside his Henderson home in the early hours of June 18, something felt off.

An unmarked car sat parked outside the Green Valley residence, and another lurked across the street, his wife, Alena Olaes, said. As he began his drive, both vehicles pulled out behind him. He was being followed.

Schulze executed a sharp U-turn and retreated to his driveway. But the vehicles continued to trail him, and moments later, federal immigration agents — armed with weapons and wearing masks — moved in to detain him.

The confrontation revealed a stark dispute over his identity: Schulze claims he’s an American citizen; immigration authorities want to return him to his birth country of Canada over a previous drug conviction.

There was no indication the people following him were law enforcement, and he didn’t know if he was being abducted, Olaes said.

Schulze “said they just took him and didn’t even tell him anything,” Olaes recalled. “Not even, ‘Here are your rights. You have the right to remain silent.’ Nothing. Just threw him in there like a dog.”

Schulze, 57, has been at the Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump for nearly seven weeks and now awaits deportation.

In 2003, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his involvement in a drug trafficking operation that imported methamphetamine to Hawaii, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. He was released in 2022.

“In this country, you pay your time, you move on, you provide for your family, you learn from your mistakes and you do better,” said Hardeep Sull, Schulze’s attorney. Schulze “was doing that and was getting his life in order,” she added.

Questions about mother’s citizenship

Schulze’s adoptive mother was an American citizen who had renounced her status, Sull said. But when the family moved to Hawaii, she naturalized around 1981, Sull said.

That would have made her client 14 years old at the time, automatically deriving his citizenship from his mother under U.S. law.

But Schulze’s mother died in 2017 and Sull hasn’t been able to get a copy of the decades-old document proving when she became a citizen.

Instead, on July 23, Sull presented the Las Vegas Immigration Court judge with an article from a trade journal showing that Schulze’s mother worked for decades as a technical librarian at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Sull said she had a level of clearance that would have necessitated her being a citizen.

But lacking a document stating exactly when she got her citizenship, Sull’s evidence wasn’t enough for the immigration court judge. Instead of continuing to fight the case from a Pahrump detention center, Schulze decided he’d rather be sent to Canada to continue his efforts there.

A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a statement to the Sun that Schulze is “an illegal alien and convicted felon who used his lawful entry into the beautiful Hawaiian Islands to distribute methamphetamine.”

He “had the nerve to apply for citizenship to the country whose people he victimized,” the spokesperson said. “Schulze has lost his privilege to live in the United States and is in ICE custody, pending removal to Canada.”

Sull rejected that her client was applying for citizenship, saying instead that he was looking to certify the citizenship he has through his mother.

In 2022, he first applied for the certificate with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Sull said. He also filed a petition in 2024 to compel the agency to review his appeal on that request.

The local U.S. Attorney’s office, which Schulze had been communicating with prior to his detainment, later told him that USCIS had “messed up” and that he’d have to apply again, Sull said.

USCIS denied his second application, Sull said because the agency ignored Schulze’s mother’s legal status.

“She naturalized because she came into the country as a lawful permanent resident,” the lawyer said. “We have that record, and then, coupled with the trade journal and the fact that she worked on an Army base for 35 years … she definitely had naturalized.”

Sull thinks USCIS wanted a certificate of the mother’s citizenship that they couldn’t immediately produce. Getting that certificate is further complicated by the fact that Schulze’s mother was deaf and, Sull believes, got special accommodations at her local office for the naturalization ceremony. That could jumble up where the document was stored, she said.

Turning his life around

Given his serious conviction, this isn’t the first time ICE has targeted Schulze. The agency placed a detainer on him in December 2019. The detainer was later removed, according to a letter from an assistant U.S. attorney shared with the Sun.

“That detainer was dropped … and I tell you he’s been out this entire time,” Sull said. “They had agents on the field who vetted him out. They (would) not let him out if they did not believe he was a U.S. citizen at that time.”

Olaes said he’s a reformed person and was working with a window installation company while doing some extra handyman jobs on the side before being detained.

A former district court judge who worked with him in his new job sent a letter to the court describing Schulze as “one of the most … honest men I have ever known.” The letter was shared with the Sun.

“Recently I found out about his past and immigration status, which I was not aware of until his incarceration,” the judge wrote. “I would hope that Michael will be given the opportunity to rectify this situation and be released to his wife and children to do so.”

Olaes also points to Schulze’s work in prison, where she said the legal advice he gave to fellow inmates helped them reduce their sentences.

Olaes, who has four daughters from other relationships, said the father of one child won’t let her go to Canada. If Schulze can’t come back to the U.S., “They basically took away (their) stepdad,” Olaes said.

Each child is handling the situation in their own way. Her 10-year-old doesn’t fully understand what’s happening, thinking her stepfather is away on a job up north. Her 29-year-old daughter, who has autism, calls his phone confused as to why he won’t pick up, Olaes said.

Schulze and Olaes have stayed in contact with daily phone calls.

“Every morning, (he says) ‘Hi hon, how are you?’ … Just irritatingly positive,” Olaes said, half-joking. “He knows how dark I can be … I could sit in my bed for days and just think about all this nastiness.”

They are also dealing with the financial fallout of his detention. Schulze accounted for the majority of their household income, leaving his family struggling to cover basic expenses.

What “we’re going to do is go to the state for help and get welfare, food stamps, whatever we could get,” Olaes said.

When sent to Canada, Olaes said her husband’s handyman skillset will help him land employment, but he will be sent to a place he doesn’t know. He’s got a few cousins and a friend there, she said.

And once the lease ends on their home at the end of the year, Olaes expects she’ll be joining her husband.

“I’m not leaving him,” she said. “We came this far.”

[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @Kyle_Chouinard