Minor Drug Cases, Major Trouble for Immigrants

[alp227]

ELMONT, N.Y. — When a police officer in this Long Island suburb found a marijuana cigarette in Jerry Lemaine’s pocket one night in January 2007, a Legal Aid lawyer counseled him to plead guilty. Under state statutes, the penalty was only a $100 fine, and though Mr. Lemaine had been caught with a small amount of marijuana years earlier as a teenager, that case had been dismissed.

But Mr. Lemaine, a legal permanent resident, soon discovered that his quick guilty plea had dire consequences. Immigration authorities flew him in shackles to Texas, where he spent three years behind bars, including 10 months in solitary confinement, as he fought deportation to Haiti, the country he had left at age 3.

Under federal rulings that prevailed in Texas, Mr. Lemaine had lost the legal opportunity that rulings in New York would have allowed: to have an immigration judge weigh his offenses, including earlier misdemeanors resolved without jail time, against other aspects of his life, like his nursing studies at Hunter Business School; his care for his little sister, a United States citizen with a brain disorder; and the help he gave his divorced mother, who had worked double shifts to move the family out of a dangerous Brooklyn neighborhood.

Now Mr. Lemaine, 28, is among thousands of noncitizens whose fate may hinge on a case to be argued on Wednesday before the United States Supreme Court, in a challenge to the way the government interprets immigration laws about drug-related convictions. The government maintains that for deportation purposes, two convictions for drug possession add up to the equivalent of drug trafficking, an “aggravated felony” that requires expulsion and prohibits immigration courts from granting exceptions based on individual life circumstances.

That interpretation of laws passed in 1996 has been rejected by four judicial circuits, including New York’s. But two circuits have upheld it, most notably the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana and Texas — states where the government routinely transfers tens of thousands of immigration detainees each year, mainly from the Northeast.

The case before the Supreme Court, Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, involves a longtime legal resident of Texas who was deported to Mexico based on convictions for possession of marijuana and a tablet of Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug. His fiancée and four children, all United States citizens, were left behind.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/nyregion/31drug.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

(sigh) if the US could just give up on this failed "War on Drugs" and legalize marijuana already immigration courts' caseloads would be lighter, and law enforcement would have more time to deal with more serious crimes.

[sharp_stick]

1. What a waste of money

we have people locked up for a joint, absolutely pathetic.