Thread: Illegal immigrants rounded up four years ago fight deportati

Illegal immigrants rounded up four years ago fight deportation as future hangs in the balance


BY Erica Pearson
Sunday, July 31st 2011, 4:00 AM

More than a dozen illegal immigrants rounded up barefoot and in pajamas in home raids four years ago are still fighting deportation - saying the feds violated their rights.

They wait in limbo as immigration courts hand out quite different decisions in nearly identical cases.

"These cases are really important because they're the first to consider the issue of whether immigration agents can bust into your bedroom at night," said Anne Pilsbury, director of Central American Legal Assistance.

The Brooklyn nonprofit is representing 14 snared in the 2007 raids, which targeted addresses where immigrants with a final deportation notice had once lived and instead swept up current residents.

None of the 14 had a prior order or notice from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"We were asleep. We didn't know what was happening," said Jose Matias Pretzantin, 30, whose Jamaica, Queens, building was raided at 5 a.m. that March.

"We were all so scared. They didn't give us time to get dressed, they handcuffed us all barefoot."

ICE agents, who did not have a warrant, interrogated Pretzantin and five family members, holding them until 6 p.m. and then ordered them deported.

Pilsbury argues evidence gathered during the raids can't be used to deport them because the Constitution protects everyone from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Initially, immigration judges agreed, ruling in all of Pilsbury's cases that ICE could not use evidence from the raids. After Homeland Security appealed, the Board of Immigration Appeals has sided with the feds three times and the immigrants once.

"They have gone absolutely and diametrically opposed," Pilsbury said.

The board said in December that ICE can use evidence resulting from the raid to deport Pretzantin and his family.

Officials wrote that because feds later confirmed from other sources that they were born in Guatemala, it didn't matter if ICE violated the Fourth Amendment, and it's up to the Pretzantins to prove that they entered the country legally.

Then, last month, the appeals board threw out deportation orders for two Salvadoran brothers Pilsbury represents, saying a similar Long Island raid in the same month was "egregious."

They also wrote that ICE would have never known about the brothers if they hadn't seized their IDs in the search, so birth certificates from their home countries aren't truly independent evidence.

Elaine Komis of the Executive Office for Immigration Review said her office does not comment on case decisions.

It isn't clear whether Homeland Security will appeal again in the brothers' case. Pilsbury's group has appealed in all of the cases that were turned down. Several, including Pretzantin's, are heading to the Second Circuit.

Even if all of the deportation orders for those raided are eventually thrown out, they will not have a new legal way to stay. They'd go back under the radar.

"The best these guys can hope for is just to go back to zero," Pilsbury said.

epearson@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/3sknk52

I swear it never ends. Why do these people have any rights to appeal when they are not even here legally?

Originally Posted by thedramaofmylife

I swear it never ends. Why do these people have any rights to appeal when they are not even here legally?

They apparently have MORE rights then we do! And organizations are making a lot of money from this.

Pilsbury argues evidence gathered during the raids can't be used to deport them because the Constitution protects everyone from unreasonable searches and seizures

As I said unless you are an American citizen,these days...........

"We were all so scared. They didn't give us time to get dressed, they handcuffed us all barefoot."

As they do and would do during any bust,NOT JUST because you are an illegal lalien

some really great comments on that article also

Who cares about their rights, when they don't have any in the first place.....?