Oliver Lewis.

Being stateless is a ‘punishment more primitive than torture’. Two people in New Zealand are thought to be without nationality, reports

They can’t work, travel is near impossible, and in many instances they can’t marry or own property. Being stateless in a world structured around nation states is, according to the United Nations, to ‘‘face a lifetime of obstacles and disappointment’’.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates at least 10 million people around the world ‘‘are denied a nationality’’.

In New Zealand, there are thought to be just two.

Harmon Wilfred claims to be a former CIA contractor, an asset who ‘‘unwittingly’’ participated in and later blew the whistle on a plot to launder billions of dollars for a ‘‘CIA/Clinton . . . black ops ‘super fund’’’.

In his own words, he is now an ‘‘unwanted alien on planet earth’’, an exile in New Zealand

Immigration New Zealand cannot release details of the other known stateless individual. However, they have confirmed that person is not subject to a deportation order.

And now, no longer is Wilfred.

A letter to Donald Trump

In the past seven years, Immigration NZ has deported 4578 people from New Zealand at a rate of about 670 a year.

They may have left the country, but Wilfred has remained – protected by his stateless status, and lack of valid travel documents.

Immigration NZ first issued the former US citizen with a deportation order in February 2011 ‘‘following the conclusion of multiple immigration applications and appeals’’, years after his legal right to stay in the country lapsed in 2004.

To enforce it, they asked American authorities for travel papers. The multiple requests were evidently refused, because in February this year Immigration NZ quietly withdrew the deportation order.

‘‘Mr Wilfred is still unlawfully in New Zealand and it is our expectation that he will make immediate and urgent steps to arrange his departure from New Zealand,’’ Immigration NZ assistant general manager Peter Devoy said.

The Americans, for their part, were tight-lipped. A US Embassy spokeswoman said it was against policy to comment on individual cases or situations.

And so the ‘‘unwanted alien’’ remains. His friends and supporters have railed against the supposed injustice of his situation, describing the New Zealand Government as a de-facto jailer.

‘‘He is neither permitted to find employment and earn his living in New Zealand, nor to travel outside it,’’ friend and business partner Hugh Steadman wrote in 2016.

‘‘Though imprisoned in what might appear to be a gilded cage, with no end in sight, his sentence appears to be for life.’’

But Wilfred, who is understood to live in Lincoln, outside of Christchurch, chose to become stateless.

He and his wife, the Canadian food company heiress Carolyn Dare-Wilfred, arrived in New Zealand in 2001 to avoid what he describes in one email as alleged political retribution and safety from CIA death threats.

In 2005, while still living in New Zealand, Wilfred relinquished his US citizenship. He claimed he did so because the US Consulate General refused to return his passport.

‘‘For my personal freedom and safety and to avoid being sent back to the US for further abuse, I was advised to renounce my US citizenship,’’ he said in an open letter posted to his website.

The US is one of the few countries in the world that allows its citizens to relinquish their citizenship without holding that of another nation. And when it is relinquished, the act is ‘‘irrevocable’’, the US Embassy spokeswoman said.

Those who relinquish citizenship are