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A Colorado priest who has been in the United States for 24 years is on the brink of being deported to Uganda, where his supporters say he could face political persecution from the regime ruling his home country.

The Rev. Edward Nalwamba, 78, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on September 18, according to ICE arrest records. He is scheduled to be deported to Uganda as early as Tuesday. Nalwamba does not have permanent legal status in the United States and was told by ICE late last summer to leave the country.

His supporters had initially expected him to be transferred early Monday morning from the ICE detention center in Aurora prior to his flight out of the country. But one of his attorneys, Joy Athanasiou, said he had still not been moved as of late Monday morning.

Nalwamba has been in detention since his arrest more than nine months ago, when he was picked up on his way to care for a disabled person, said the Rev. Phil Eberhart. Eberhart leads Resurrection Anglican Fellowship, the Greenwood Village church where Nalwamba had worked prior to this retirement.

Nalwamba developed pneumonia late last year and was found unconscious by other detainees, Eberhart said. He has not tolerated the detention center’s food and lost 20 pounds during a two-week stretch in December. He now relies on a wheelchair and has developed what appears to be another respiratory infection, Eberhart said.

“He was strong and able to do everything for himself when he went in in September,” Eberhart said. “And he’s no longer strong, at all.”

Eberhart, who led a prayer vigil for Nalwamba outside the detention center Saturday, said Nalwamba “is resigned to the will of God.”

A message sent to ICE representatives on Monday was not returned.

Eberhart and others said they were afraid that Nalwamba would be arrested or persecuted if he’s returned to Uganda.

Nalwamba came to the United States for a religious conference in January 2002, then stayed in the country after friends in Uganda urged him not to return, . He’d run afoul of government authorities in Uganda, which has been led by President Yoweri Museveni for the past 40 years. He was warned to 鈥渟top making political statements in public” and to stop being a 鈥渟tumbling block.”

While applying for asylum more than 15 years ago, Nalwamba told U.S. immigration authorities about an incident earlier back home when Ugandan officials had come to his church and told him that he should direct his congregation to vote for Museveni. He refused and was subsequently kidnapped twice by government authorities.

Eberhart said that, several years ago, he spoke with Nalwamba’s daughter, who was visited at her university by Ugandan officials asking about her father’s whereabouts.

U.S. authorities denied Nalwamba’s application for asylum, along with an appeal, because of what Eberhart and others called poor legal representation.

Nalwamba was initially arrested because of his immigration status in 2010 and held for several months in Colorado Springs, Eberthart said. He was released under an order of supervision the next year, requiring regular check-ins with immigration authorities.

Eberhart said he’s been in contact with the Anglican church in Uganda so that church officials could try to be present when Nalwamba’s plane lands.

“He may never appear in public anyway, if they’re true to their form,” Eberhart said after a press conference organized Sunday at the church. “It’s Africa.”

“Well, and it’s America, today, that’s sending him into that,” replied Patty Werner, who had attended the event with her daughter, Wendy. They’d met Nalwamba in 2010, and he’d written them letters when he was first detained.

A few weeks after they met, Wendy was hospitalized after falling out of tree, and Nalwamba came to visit her. Patty Werner held a cardboard sign Sunday that included a pasted photo of him sitting by Wendy’s hospital bed.

After his 2011 release, Nalwamba still did not obtain permanent legal status but was allowed to continue living in the U.S. — until his arrest in September.

“The government has every legal right to take the actions it’s taken,” David Simmons, another of Nalwamba’s attorneys, told the church gathering Sunday. “That doesn’t mean they’re right — just like slavery was legal but is no longer recognized as something that was either moral or the right thing to do.

“We can’t say the government is legally wrong. What we’re asking the government to do is … exercise discretion in his favor, recognize that he’s been here for 25 years, recognize that he has significant ties to the community and recognize that if he’s returned to Uganda, his life or his freedom —聽or both — will be endangered.”

Nalwamba’s detention has shaken a group of supporters who have come to know Nalwamba over the past two decades — and has launched a flurry of last-ditch efforts to try to secure his release before he’s deported.

U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper met with Nalwamba in the detention center Sunday and said in a statement that he was doing “everything we can to press this administration to pause his deportation.”

Nalwamba’s attorneys have filed an emergency request with a federal immigration appeals court to halt his removal; a prior attempt to secure his immediate release was rejected by a federal judge because of his imminent deportation. Given the Trump administration’s extensive efforts to arrest and deport as many immigrants without legal status as possible, Simmons acknowledged that the kind of discretion they were seeking was “fairly rare.”

After Sunday’s press conference at the church, congregants strategized on how and when to call the White House.

Jim and Pam Horner, with whom Nalwamba lived after his first arrest, said they learned of his latest detention when they tried to call him in early November for his birthday. They described him as an optimistic, spiritual man who constantly sang religious songs. He had weathered his time in a jail in Colorado Springs well, they said, because he could talk to other inmates about religion.

He’d been hopeful in November and early December that he would be released by Christmas, Pam Horner said. When Jim Horner returned for another visit shortly after, Nalwamba was sick and growing weaker.

“It is just so disillusioning, as an American, that we would treat people this way (who have) the character of Edward,” Jim Horner said. “Twenty-five years later, you’re going to show no grace, no mercy, no compassion?”