KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) — Even as the issue of immigration has been central to the government shutdown in Washington, a respected doctor at Kalamazoo’s Bronson Methodist Hospital who has been living in America for nearly 40 years finds himself in jail after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him from his home in handcuffs.

Lukasz Niec is an internal medicine doctor putting in long hours as a hospitalist for Bronson. His co-workers describe him as the model of what a physician should be.

And now, he is sitting in a jail cell in Calhoun County with no idea of when — or if — he will be free to return to his patients and his family.

“In 1979, my parents were both doctors left Poland and took two suitcases and two small children, my brother was five and I was six and they came here for a better life for their kids,” said Iwona Niec-Villaire Saturday as she sat next to her sister-in-law.

Now, the siblings are in their mid-40s, she is an attorney, he is a doctor — they have been in America for four decades on a permanent green card.