The Department of Homeland Security appealed an immigration judge’s decision to allow a State College man who spent 43 years in prison on a now-overturned murder conviction to remain in the United States.

It was one of two legal setbacks this week for Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, as a federal district court judge gave the government a month to respond to his petition to be released from the Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center on bond until his immigration case is resolved.

The two decisions mean Vedam will remain detained at the facility near Philipsburg until at least mid-May. A spokesperson for Vedam’s family said the DHS appeal and the timetable for a district court review “has pushed the staggering hardships Vedam has withstood into a new level of surreal territory.”

Vedam was released from Huntingdon state prison in October after a Centre County judge vacated his conviction for the 1980 murder of Thomas Kinser, but was immediately detained by ICE for a deportation order issued in the 1990s based on his separate, decades-old conviction for selling LSD when he was 19 and has been in ICE custody for the last six and a half months.

The government is seeking to deport Vedam to India, where he was born in 1961 during a brief period when his parents returned to their home country. He has lived in the United States since he was nine months old and was a legal permanent resident, or green card holder, close to earning his citizenship when he was arrested in the spring of 1982.

Vedam has no immediate family in India and does not speak any of the country’s languages.

Immigration Judge Adam Panopoulos on April 2 granted Vedam’s request for a waiver from deportation, saying that the 64-year-old demonstrated “good moral character” over the last four decades and that it “would be in the best interest of the United States” for him to remain in the country.