Thread: Court Weighs Rule to Warn Immigrants of Deportation Risk

Court Weighs Rule to Warn Immigrants of Deportation Risk



Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News

Lincoln Park — Teresa Ramirez was angry at her ex-husband for a fight they had as their 10-year marriage crumbled, but she never dreamed he could get deported for pleading guilty to attempted domestic assault.
David Flores-Reja, 33, a legal resident with custody of his daughters, avoided jail time as part of a plea deal. But federal authorities later told him his new status as a felony offender meant he could be deported. Since November, he's been in Mexico, separated from Alba, 10, and Sofia, 2 — maybe for good.

Because of cases like his, Michigan's Supreme Court may soon require judges to warn aliens with legal residency that pleading guilty in a criminal case could get them kicked out of the country.
"Taking him away from his babies was unfair," said Ramirez, 31. "He has responsibilities here that he can't meet from the middle of Mexico. More than just financial, the 10-year-old, she isn't doing well in school. I keep telling her she will get to see her daddy soon, but really, I don't know."
New rules under consideration for judges statewide would require them to verbally warn noncitizen criminal defendants about the risk of deportation for any conviction — even if they face no jail time.
The proposed change comes in response to a groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court decision last year.

In that case, the High Court found that Jose Padilla, a Honduran citizen with legal permanent resident status, was denied effective counsel when his lawyer failed to tell him pleading guilty to felony drug charges in a Kentucky court would automatically start federal deportation proceedings against him.
David Koelsch, a professor of law at the University of Detroit Mercy, compared that ruling's impact with the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision that outlawed school segregation.
"The Padilla vs. Kentucky decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is the Brown vs. Board of Education decision for immigration criminal law," Koelsch said.
"It is life-changing for immigrants and anyone who practices criminal law. People would take a plea and have no idea it had immigration consequences. A criminal defense lawyer's job generally is to avoid prison sentences, but in many cases the immigration consequences are far more serious than incarceration."
Deportation often forced


Flores-Reja, now living with relatives in the city of his birth, Salvatierra in central Mexico, said his lawyer never warned him of the risk in taking the plea bargain — a deal that was supposed to let him continue caring for his daughters without jail time.
"I was going to fight it, but thought I'll just let this go if it helps (his ex-wife) not be so mad at me," Flores-Reja said in a telephone interview. "Now I'm here, and there is no work for me to provide for my daughters. I had landscaping there, 50 hours a week sometimes. Things were bad in Detroit, but they are worse here."

Southfield immigration attorney Julianne Cassin Sharp said Flores-Reja volunteered to leave the country in November ahead of being ordered out, in hopes that he will be able to win an appeal and return to Detroit. Sharp hopes to convince a judge to set aside the assault conviction, but has been unable to win a hearing for Flores-Reja.
"When people think of immigrants, they think of people taking advantage of our system," Sharp said. "This was a family's breadwinner. Please tell me why this man's crime is serious enough to keep him from his children, to deny them of his support?"
The U.S. Supreme Court decision on Padilla noted numerous recent changes in immigration laws that make deportation mandatory for a wide variety of crimes. Failing to tell a defendant about this risk denies a person's right to effective legal counsel, the court reasoned.
"It is not about letting immigrants off the hook," said Koelsch. "It is just letting them know what they are facing. With the legislative mood about immigration, it doesn't take much to get deported these days. You can get deported for shoplifting. This law doesn't change the risk, it just lets a person know."

Simple warning urged
The state Supreme Court conducted a public hearing Jan. 26 in Lansing on proposed language for warnings that would be issued by all Michigan judges when accepting guilty and no-contest pleas in criminal cases.
"If we look at bedrock laws, the Constitution does not discriminate between a U.S. citizen and a resident alien," said Shereef Akeel, a civil rights attorney and advisory chairman of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Greater Detroit.
"It doesn't provide for first- and second-class status of citizens. All people who have legal status in America have equal rights."
Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys' Association, said the warning under consideration in Michigan is nearly identical to proposals in all 50 states. And, prosecutors have no objection so long as the warning to be read by judges remains simple.
"From our standpoint, we understand and agree with a warning about serious collateral consequences that could occur from a plea," Burns said. "We are not interested in specifics that could turn an everyday plea bargain into a 35-page document and a 45-minute colloquy by the judge.
"It's fair to say you may be deported, but do you also need to say you can't own a gun, you can't be a barber in the state of Maryland, you can't work for a sanitation company in Nebraska, you may be spurned in your community and shunned by your church?"

Burns said the Padilla decision raised eyebrows in the law enforcement community nationwide because the subject was "non-sympathetic" even though the underlying constitutional issue is important.
"The guy is in and out of the U.S. for 30 years and he gets caught in Kentucky driving a tractor-trailer loaded with marijuana," Burns said. "But, if someone pleads guilty, we agree, there should be a warning about additional, major and serious collateral consequences."
Padilla also served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, and according to court records, accepted a plea bargain that promised to let him out of prison after five years because his lawyer assured him "he did not have to worry about immigration status since he had been in the country so long."

However, the felony drug conviction qualified as a deportable offense under the expanding federal guidelines.
dguthrie@detnews.com
(313) 222-2548

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110412/MET ... z1JJE0HrCN

I don't care how long your In our country get the hell
I don't feel sorry for any of you

The Only one I feel for are The American for what we all
put up with .
we are sick Of it & this is to all of the Senate That IN the USA
wake the hell up
No amnesty