Federal judge orders release of detained immigrant activist, says he didn't get to say goodbye
Katherine B. Forrest (Wikimedia Commons photo)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it is “actively exploring” an appeal after a federal judge in Manhattan ruled Monday that the “abrupt detention” of an immigrant rights activist was “unnecessarily cruel.”
Reading from her opinion aloud, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ordered the release of Ravi Ragbir, director of the advocacy group New Sanctuary Coalition, report the New York Times and the Washington Post.
“There is, and ought to be in this great country, the freedom to say goodbye,” Forrest wrote. “That is, the freedom to hug one’s spouse and children, the freedom to organize the myriad of human affairs over time.
“It ought not to be—and it has never before been—that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home and work. And sent away. We are not that country; and woe be the day that we become that country under a fiction that laws allow it.”
Ragbir came to the country in 1991 from Trinidad and Tobago. He became a lawful permanent U.S. resident in 1994, but was ordered deported in 2006 because of a 2000 conviction for accepting fraudulent loan applications while working at a mortgage lender. He is married to a U.S. citizen.
A stay of removal was set to end on Jan. 19, but ICE nonetheless detained Ragbir during a Jan. 11 check-in.
Forrest said Ragbir was never told that there had been an application for a “mysterious ‘travel document’ ” allowing his return to Trinidad and Tobago that was set to expire Jan. 14. The statutory scheme allowed ICE to act as it did, “but there are times when statutory schemes may be implemented in ways that tread on rights that are larger, more fundamental,” she wrote.
ICE said in a statement that it was “concerned with the tone of the district court’s decision” and it is unjust to equate the difficult work of ICE professionals with treatment in unjust regimes.
