Boyfriend sics ICE on undocumented partner amid dispute over $4.3 million Tribeca condo
Exclusive: ‘There has to be something better than this,’ Irish deportee Patrick Moore told The Independent. ‘It's not the United States that I know.’
When a Manhattan-based construction executive and his boyfriend of two decades were renovating a luxury Tribeca triplex in 2024, the two began – like many couples do amid such undertakings – to argue.
As the bickering escalated, Patrick Moran, an expert in conservation and preservation who has overseen building projects for New York City’s Carnegie Hall, the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Federal Reserve, says partner Nicholas Kjos, a high-end real estate broker who previously worked as an entertainer on cruise ships, at one point called him a “f**king immigrant,” and threatened to call ICE to have him deported, according to civil court filings reviewed by The Independent.
The 46-year-old Moran, for his part, chalked the cruel outburst up to “stress” over the ongoing overhaul of their $4.3 million apartment, which had by then already been dragging on for four years, and “continued to believe in the relationship.”
That is, until Kjos, 45, initiated legal proceedings to have Moran removed from their shared home, leveling claims that prompted a team of eight armed ICE officers to show up last summer and detain Moran for deportation. He spent the next month being shuffled around the country to various lockups, before finally being sent back to Ireland.
Getting Moran thrown out of the United States was part of a plot “intended to exploit [Moran’s] immigration status,” with a goal of “wrongfully obtain[ing] sole control, ownership and possession of the property,” the complaint alleges.
“It’s a situation where I feel that ICE was weaponized against him,” Moran’s attorney Andreas Vasilatos told The Independent. “Almost like how the Mafia just whacks a guy [they don’t want around anymore]. But here, instead of whacking the guy, it’s, ‘I’m gonna call ICE.’”
Speaking to The Independent from overseas, Moran said, “I love [the United States] and what it stands for, and I know we are better than this. I don’t claim to have the solution to immigration reform, but whatever that solution is, it must be fair, just and enforced with compassion and humanity.”
The stunning episode comes during an unprecedented expansion of ICE’s remit, with more than 73,000 people now in immigration detention – an all-time high and a 75 percent increase in the 12 months since Donald Trump retook the White House.
In Florida, the state’s attorney general has encouraged people with undocumented exes to report them to ICE. The top ICE official at the agency’s Puerto Rico field office said investigators today receive “revenge tips” they never got previously, telling NPR that people are turning in “a neighbor that they don’t get along with, or an ex-husband, ex-wife, ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend.” Last year, after a 29-year-old NYPD sergeant was spurned by a woman he met online, he allegedly threatened to have her deported by ICE.
Between January and September 2025, the U.S. deported 99 Irish citizens, a 50 percent increase compared to a year earlier, and an 1,880 percent increase over the five people deported back to Ireland in 2021.
Moran’s forced return has left him “shattered,” according to Vasilatos. He described Moran as a “super sweet guy,” who “contributed to society and was a net positive” to everybody in his life.
“It’s not disputed he was undocumented,” Vasilatos said. “But to not take into consideration his contributions to America over the last 20 years, makes it particularly draconian and particularly punitive.”
Kjos did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Moran and Kjos, who is originally from San Antonio, were introduced by a mutual friend in 2005, and quickly embarked on a romantic relationship “characterized by mutual love and commitment,” according to a lawsuit Vasilatos filed January 29 on Moran’s behalf in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Shortly after they began dating, Kjos gave up his career at sea to pursue potential opportunities as an actor-singer on Broadway, the complaint continues. About six months later, the pair began living together in Midtown, Moran’s complaint says.
They spent holidays together at Kjos’s family ranch in Texas, attended weddings together and Moran became Kjos’s nephew’s godfather, the complaint goes on. Moran and Kjos bought a Bernedoodle named Benji, which became “a beloved part of their shared life,” according to the complaint.
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Moran, who earned more than $300,000 a year, was the “primary financial provider” for the pair, the complaint states. Kjos left his seaborne career behind and obtained a real estate license, splitting his time between New York and Texas, the complaint says, noting that Moran hired a “nationally recognized website designer to create and maintain a state-of-the-art website” for Kjos, among other things. In 2015, Moran and Kjos decided to purchase a $400,000 apartment atop the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Antonio, completely redoing the brand-new space at Moran’s expense, the complaint contends.
And because dealing in multimillion-dollar properties was a business that “emphasized image,” Moran provided cash down payments for Kjos to buy, at various times, a Range Rover, a Mercedes and a Porsche.
“At no time did [Moran] view these payments as individual obligations; rather, they were treated as joint contributions to the parties' shared life,” according to the complaint.
Due to Moran’s undocumented immigration status, the San Antonio home was titled in Kjos’s name, but “it was understood and intended to be jointly owned and benefited from by both parties,” according to the complaint.
In 2020, Moran and Kjos decided to buy a place in New York City, setting their sights on a raw three-story condo in the Tribeca section of Lower Manhattan.
Like the San Antonio home, Moran’s immigration status meant the Tribeca property also needed to be titled in Kjos’s name, according to the complaint. But, it says, “it was acquired and renovated with the understanding that it was a joint asset for their mutual benefit.”
Three years went by, and in December 2024, Moran resigned from his job and co-founded his own construction firm. By this time, the two had started to argue, the complaint explains. It says Kjos made “derogatory remarks such as calling [Moran] a ‘f**king immigrant,’ and threatening to ‘report’ him to immigration authorities for deportation.”
Nevertheless, Moran “attributed this to project stress” and continued to trust that the relationship between him and Kjos would endure, according to the complaint.
At this point, the renovation costs began to soar, the complaint states. Under intense financial pressure, the couple agreed to sell their San Antonio apartment, complete the renovations to the apartment in Tribeca and sell it, then part ways, according to the complaint.
With the Tribeca renovation nearing completion, it says Kjos demanded that Moran move out for staging and sale, while also claiming the local real estate market was weak and that issues with the building’s foundation would devalue the property. But, Moran’s complaint argues, a comprehensive valuation report from the Office of the New York State Comptroller deemed the Tribeca market “at a peak,” an assertion backed up by consultations with real estate professionals who estimated the renovated space “should command approximately $4,300,000.”
In early August, Moran got home to find a notice ordering him to vacate the property within 10 days, the complaint states. Because the apartment belonged to both of them, Moran decided to fight it out in court, where Kjos’s lawyer “falsely accused [Moran] of selling methamphetamine, a baseless claim,” according to the complaint, which insists that Moran, who said he has no criminal history whatsoever, “has never sold drugs,” nor ever charged with doing so.
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Kjos, in an “attempt to escalate” things, then called ICE and made the same spurious claim, unbeknownst to Moran, the complaint says.
“On the morning of October 31, 2025, [Kjos] remotely unlocked the North Moore property door via his Control4… phone app, allowing eight armed ICE officers to enter and detain [Moran],” according to the complaint. “The officers, at the… permission of [Moran], searched the apartment and found no contraband or evidence of drugs. When the search was completed and [Moran] was removed from the apartment, [Kjos], through the use of his Control4 app, locked the door behind them.”
Moran was taken into custody at gunpoint and forced out of the apartment in a T-shirt and sweatpants, he said. He asked to change into something more appropriate, and to get his keys, but the ICE officers refused, according to Moran.
That afternoon, while at Delaney Hall, a notorious ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey, Moran was able to contact his business partner and their IT administrator and gave them permission to go into the Tribeca condo to retrieve his laptop and company files, “which were necessary for the continued operation of the company,” the complaint states.
But, it says, when Kjos got a notification on his phone from the Control4 app that they had entered the place, he “immediately called them up and falsely stated it was a federal crime scene and they were about to be arrested, as the police were on the way.”
Moran’s complaint says no drug-related charges were filed, and that six months of apartment surveillance video would prove that no drugs were being sold out of the apartment, if only Kjos would allow him access to the footage.
“It was so insulting,” Moran told The Independent, pushing back vehemently against the notion that he ever did anything of the sort. “I was furious… Like, ‘Is somebody punking me?’ It was such a low blow.”
After about four weeks in ICE custody, culminating with a stint at an ICE facility in San Diego, Moran was permitted to “self-deport” back to Ireland, on a plane ticket his parents bought for him. He is now trying to pick up the pieces of his life from afar, and is hoping to resume his life in America eventually.
Kjos presently has full possession of the Tribeca apartment. In Moran’s suit against Kjos, he is seeking to get back his half of their joint assets and joint custody of their dog. The remedy here, in legal terms, is known as a constructive trust, in which the court would declare Kjos to be wrongfully holding property belonging to Moran, and force him to give it back so as not to be “unjustly enriched.”
“I wasn't angry,” Moran told The Independent. “It was just sad. I was in a relationship for 20 years with this person, and as far as I was concerned, there wasn't going to be another person.”
Asked where things stand now between himself and Kjos, Moran said he didn’t know. At the same time, he emphasized, he continues to believe in the U.S. And, Moran went on, his experience in ICE detention gave him a perspective on things that left an indelible mark.
“Don't get me wrong, it was hard for me, but it was so much harder for pretty much everybody that I spoke to in there,” Moran said. “There are people in there that don't have anybody, that have nothing. They don't have money for commissary. So how are they to defend themselves?”
Although Moran is an Irish native, he said he in fact spent more time living in the U.S. than he did in Ireland, and truly considers New York to be his home.
“I will bounce back, and that's because America will allow me to do that,” Moran said. “That's why I love it there. But... [t]here has to be something better than this. It's not the United States that I know.”
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