Thread: Judge orders naturalized citizen deported

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/ ... 503088.htm

Posted on Tue, Sep. 12, 2006

Judge orders naturalized citizen deported

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com

Lionel Jean-Baptiste, the first naturalized American in recent times to lose his citizenship after a criminal conviction, gave up his legal battle Tuesday to stay in the United States and show he was wrongly stripped of his status.

U.S. immigration Judge Kenneth S. Hurewitz ordered Jean Baptiste, 58, deported to his native Haiti -- but advised him that he may yet get to stay in the United States if the Haitian government refuses to take him back.

''This court finds you deportable, and I order you removed to Haiti,'' Judge Hurewitz told Jean-Baptiste, clad in an orange detainee jumpsuit. ``But it may be that Haiti won't accept you back, and you may stay in the United States.''

Ralph Latortue, the Haitian consul general in Miami, told The Miami Herald in July that he will not issue a travel document to Jean-Baptiste if and when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to remove the former U.S. citizen to Haiti. The reason, said Latortue, is the 19-year-old Haitian Constitution, which regards Haiti-born people who become citizens of another country as no longer Haitian citizens. Therefore, Haiti would be under no obligation to accept Jean-Baptiste.

Hurewitz's ruling at the end of a two-hour court hearing at the Krome detention center in west Miami-Dade amounted to a victory for the U.S. government, which had sought an immigration judge's deportation order against Jean-Baptiste. The Little Haiti restaurant owner told Hurewitz he accepted the removal order and did not plan to appeal. Jean-Baptiste's decision was based on his attorney's advice that he may ultimately be released if he stopped his legal fight.

When Hurewitz's deportation order becomes final, immigration authorities will have up to six months to try to deport Jean-Baptiste. If the effort fails, then Jean-Baptiste likely would be released under a 2001 Supreme Court ruling barring the indefinite detention of foreign nationals who cannot be deported -- unless a detainee is classified a danger to the community. Jean-Baptiste would be subject to supervised release -- likely required to report regularly to the immigration agency. He would not get his citizenship or green card back, but he might be eligible for a work permit.

André Pierre, Jean-Baptiste's attorney, tried to convince Hurewitz that his client could not be deported both because at the time of conviction he was a U.S. citizen and because the Haitian government would not accept him.

Hurewitz replied that though Jean-Baptiste had been a citizen at the time of his 1997 conviction on crack cocaine-trafficking charges he was subject to deportation as a convicted non-citizen.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled last year that the mere commission of a crime while a person awaits citizenship was enough to revoke citizenship afterward -- even if the person was not charged or convicted when he swore allegiance to the United States. Jean-Baptiste appealed, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Hurewitz said he based his removal order on immigration case law. He cited a 1966 case, known as the ''Matter of Rossi,'' which was provided to the court by Thomas Baxley, the attorney representing the immigration agency.

The case involved an Italian stripped of U.S. citizenship and found deportable for a conviction on drug-trafficking charges in 1954 when he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

A copy of the Rossi order, given to The Miami Herald by Pierre, said the denaturalized citizen was deportable ``on the basis of his narcotics conviction in 1954, notwithstanding the conviction occurred at a time when he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.''

''Rossi applies in this case,'' Hurewitz said.

Hurewitz's order essentially ends Jean-Baptiste's immigration case. What remains is whether Haiti will accept him or he can be deported to a third country that would take him.

For now, Jean-Baptiste remains at Krome -- the same place he started when he first arrived in the United States as a boat refugee in 1980.

I'm sure Haiti is dying to get a convicted felon back in their country.

Just give them a parachute and drop them off where they came from!

Why should we be the dumping ground for everything and everyone?