Thread: {Sob} The nightmare continues

The nightmare continues
By: LURDES C. DA SILVA 06/27/2008
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STOUGHTON, Mass. - Jodie and José Medeiros never imagined that a dream vacation to the paradise-like pink-sand beaches of Bermuda could abruptly turn into a nightmare and potentially ruin the life they had built together.
In 2001, while the Stoughton couple was clearing Customs and Immigration upon returning to Boston on a cruise ship, a ghost from the past stopped José, 45, a native of Horta, Azores, in his tracks.
Immigration officials had uncovered a criminal conviction resulting from a 1981 incident, which obstructed his admission to the United States.
At the time of the incident José was 17. He had asked someone of age to buy liquor for him. When the individual refused to give back the change, a fight broke out and José hit him with a beer bottle.
José stood trial and received a six-year sentence, of which six months were spent in jail and six months in a halfway house.
Jodie, who met José about a year later, said he has lived crime free since.
However, due to his assault and battery with a dangerous weapon conviction, he is considered to be an aggravated felon. Consequently, the United States could bar his reentrance into the country as a lawful permanent resident and start deportation proceedings.
The aggravated felony designation made José ineligible for relief from deportation. He was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at his home in January.
Jose, now sits at the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction in Dartmouth awaiting an imminent repatriation to Portugal - the country he left at age four with his parents. He has never returned.
His tentative deportation date is set for July 7.
Jodie married José in 1987 and the couple had two children. She said the six-year unrelenting legal battle has left the family emotionally and financially depleted.
"We have been fighting on every angle you can imagine," she said. "Our family has suffered quite a bit dealing with the anguish, the pain, the struggle. My legal bill is tens of thousands of dollars. I had to dig into my retirement accounts and we had to sell vehicles. Just the psychological and emotional stuff that is going on... it's pretty bad."
To aggravate the situation, José suffers from the Machado-Joseph disease (MJD) - a rare, incurable hereditary ataxia (lack of muscle control) that gradually debilitates the patient.
"He has no family in Portugal and he speaks the language very poorly. That's not his country anymore," she said. "Because of the disease, he is unstable and he will not be able to work there and support himself."
Jodie says nothing of what is happening makes sense.
"We own property, we pay taxes, we're not living on the sly," she said. "If they wanted to pick him up, he was here."
Boston Immigration Attorney Jeffrey B. Rubin, José's legal counsel, said this is the most "exceptional, extraordinary case" he has had to defend in his 10 years of practice.
"It's a very compelling case," he said. "I still remain hopeful that we are going to be able to keep him here. We have in process petitions or motions that we believe may be successful."
Rubin is currently pursuing a pardon from the governor of Massachusetts. At the end of May, he presented the case to the Governor's Advisory Board, resulting in a unanimous vote for the pardon.
"From what I have been told, the governor is considering the advisory board's opinion seriously," said Rubin.
Even if the pardon is granted, ICE still has to be convinced that the pardon will make the federal charge moot.
"This has not been done in any federal circuit in the country," said Jodie.
Attorney Rubin stressed the complexity of the case.
"We are in a difficult situation where even a pardon may not preserve the upholding of living in the United States," he said. "A pardon does waive someone from being removed, but when someone is trying to get admitted to the country, there is some case law that stands for the proposition that a pardon does not waive that."
But if a revision of Jose's case would be granted and the sentence reduced to less than one year, the pardon would not be required and there would not be any dispute that he could stay in the country.
"Back then (1980s), there were longer sentences on paper, but the actually time you did was shorter. But truth in sentencing in Massachusetts changed that so that sentences are more accurate," said Attorney Rubin. "But immigration sees what is on paper."
According to the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Law, any legal permanent alien convicted of at least one felony or at least two misdemeanors can face deportation, if they are sentenced to more than one year, even if it was a suspended sentence. The law is often applied retroactively, like in José's case.
"We all know the unfairness of 1996 Congressional Statute and Congress's inability to address in reform any of the inequities and injustices and draconian measures that have resulted from that," said Attorney Rubin.
For Jodie, the whole situation has been "very desperate."
"I am seeing a therapist; they actually told me that what I am going through right now is like post traumatic disorder. You are continuously becoming traumatized by all the stuff that is happening," she said. "And every time I speak with him (José), he cries."
Jodie, who was born in the United States and has no Portuguese lineage, said her family is "going to fight all the way to the end."
"If they deport him; they're deporting me," she said. "I made a promise to my husband when we got married. This will not stop us from being together. It might take a year or two, but I am not going to let him live by himself. But if we move there, I don't know the language and I have no way of supporting us."
Rachel Rosenbloom, a supervising attorney at Boston College's Center for Human Rights and International Justice who recently testified before Congress about Problems with ICE Interrogation, Detention and Removal Procedures, said José's case is not an isolated incident. There are probably thousands of similar cases, she said.
"We see these cases every day," she told O Jornal. "We get all kinds of situations in which someone is leading a perfectly productive life here and is caught up in deportation and banned for life from coming back to the United States for things they did many years ago."
Like Rubin, she blames the immigration law passed in 1996.
"Judges had the power to look at all the facts of the case and make a reasonable decision about what would be the best result," she said. "Congress took that power away from the judges in 1996, and it really needs to be restored because there are all of these cases that just show what tragic results come from the harshness of these laws."
"This affects the individual, the immediate family and the whole community," she added. "When you start loosing multiple people to deportation or the community is left to deal with the consequences on the families... this is a problem for everyone."
Although she admits it is impossible to quantify how many people would not have been deported if the 1996 law had not been adopted, she estimates that tens of thousands of repatriations could have been avoided.
"The government has not been very forthcoming with the data to assemble the statistics on this," she said. "In 2005, there were 90,000 people deported on criminal grounds from the United States. When the relief was available, it was granted about half of the time. So, it's fair to say that tens of thousands of those people deported every year would have been granted the right to stay here under the old laws. But now, even if the judges wanted to do that, their hands are tied... even if it were a person who did not serve a day in jail."
Paula Grenier, spokesperson for ICE, said the Department of Homeland Security agency does not keep track of how many individuals have been deported as a result of offenses committed before 1996 or of their nationalities.
"We have criminal and non criminal numbers, but they do not indicate how old the criminal record is," she said.
However, Grenier was able to provide some statistics from fiscal year 2007. In New England, ICE deported 2,421 people, of those 950 on criminal charges.
Immigration Attorney Frederick Q. Watt of New Bedford, who took a retroactive deportation case to the Supreme Court and won, said cases like José's are becoming more common. The Supreme Court ruled that individuals who pled guilty to crimes committed prior to 1996 qualify for a relief hearing.
"It's coming up more and more. This whole theory of disqualification [from relief] happens a lot in the Portuguese community," he told O Jornal. "It is terribly inequitable and not at all fair, but legally speaking they've [ICE] got a pretty good argument. I am not anticipating a change, and it is going to be causing a lot of problems."
According to Fernanda Coelho, Consul of Portugal in New Bedford, most of the Portuguese citizens deported from this area are removed for offenses committed before 1996.
"I would say that 90 percent of the situations result from cases that happened prior to the promulgation of the law in 1996," she told O Jornal.
Last year, the Consulate provided support to 40 individuals, while in 2006 it assisted about 30 individuals. Coelho said the role of the Consulate is to assure Portuguese individuals receive proper legal representation here and adequate assistance once they arrive in Portugal.
Attorney Watt anticipates the number of local individuals put into deportation proceedings will increase in the near future, when the proposed rule requiring that all United States permanent residents with a Green Card without an expiration date apply for a new and updated card goes into effect. A valid Green Card is proof of the bearer's legal status in the United States.
"That's what really scares me," said Watt. "I think that's going to get really ugly."
Watt - who has strongly recommended that legal permanent aliens who had any run with the law request a CORI check (copy of their criminal record) before traveling outside the country - is now advising green card holders to do the same before they apply for a new card.
One of the local agencies that has been encouraging its clients to request CORI checks is the Immigrants' Assistance Center (IAC) of New Bedford. It is a way for individuals to avoid finding themselves in predicaments similar to the Medeiros family, said Helena Marques, IAC's executive director.
"It's a story that is happening too many times and more often then before," she said. "It's really a sad situation. Unfortunately, I see way too many cases like this."
The center, which has a protocol with Portugal to offer vital services to local Portuguese legal immigrants facing deportation and their families, is currently helping 17 nationals awaiting repatriation at the Dartmouth jail. In the last two years, the IAC has provided assistance to 156 Portuguese deportable inmates.
"About 90 percent of the cases we work with are retroactive cases," said Marques. "The retroactive portion of the immigration law does not make any sense whatsoever. People are talking about immigration reform and keep talking about the undocumented, but unfortunately these laws also target legal permanent residents and have actually become a terrible nightmare for these families."
Inês Gonçalves-Drolet, who recently represented Cong. Barney Frank at a conference on deportation issues in Portugal, said legislators can offer little help to individuals like José.
"With criminal cases you often have to go back to the criminal case and that requires legal assistance, so there is little that we can do except to advise them to seek legal help," she said.
"We wish the law would allow us to have a hearing before a judge and show the rehabilitation, family, humanitarian side, the number of years they lived in the country, the nature of the crime and how long ago it was... take all that into consideration and have a judge allow for a second chance," she added. "Everyone deserves a second chance. Laws should not be retrogressive."
However, she does not foresee Congress changing the law anytime soon.
"These are difficult cases because when you are talking about crimes there is generally not a lot of empathy with Congress or people wanting to change it," she said. "But all of immigration needs to be looked at, whether it is legal immigration, how to deal with illegal immigration or any of these deportation issues. They should all come under one big whole comprehensive review."
Rubin said everyone can point fingers, but ultimately Congress is the one to blame.
"I am very hopeful that things will change, but unfortunately time is running out for our client," he said. "It's a shame."
As for Jodie, she prefers to not attribute blame.
"I don't want to point fingers," she said. "I think people need to hear our story... it's insane what is going on."


Editor's Note:
At press time, we learned that Mr. Medeiros' sentence had just been revised and reduced to six months served.

http://www.ojornal.com/site/news.cfm?ne ... 3384&rfi=6

"We own property, we pay taxes, we're not living on the sly," she said. "If they wanted to pick him up, he was here."

You point is lost on me because it appears as if they did pick him up.

the real nightmare is what Illegal Aliens do to the United States and its Citizens!!!!!

We wish that some of the immigration law could go back to before 1986.

I don't see where it says he was an illegal alien, he must've had a green card if he's traveled outside the US before. He did something incredibly stupid as a minor over 20 years ago and is being crucified. In the meantime, we have gang bangers and drunk driving illegal aliens arrested 3-20 times and LET GO?!?!?! Oh excuse me, I forgot, Jose is NOT a mexican citizen living here illegally.

oh well...the law is the law....adios amigo!!