Legal Immigrants Face Deportation for Low Level Cannabis Crime

Should one joint be cause for deportation from our country? That is the case in Elmont, NY where Jerry Lemaine was found with a joint in his pocket in January of 2007. Mr. Lemaine, a legal permanent resident, pleaded guilty to the charge was was fined $100. He found out that his guilty plea had dire consequences. Immigration authorities flew him in shackles to Texas where he has spent three years behind bars all the while fighting deportation to Haiti, a country he left at age 3.

Mr. Lemaine, whose father is a United States citizen, faced an immigration judge in Harlingen, Tex., almost 2,000 miles from his home. The judge decided that under Fifth Circuit rulings, two marijuana violations made Mr. Lemaine a “recidivist felon” ineligible for bond or for any relief from deportation, even though his first marijuana offense had been dismissed, was for a very small amount of marijuana and happened when the now 28 year old was a teenager. The government says that two convictions for drug possession add up to the equivalent of drug trafficking.  Under federal rulings, Mr. Lemaine lost his legal opportunity that rulings in New York would have allowed, to have an immigration judge weigh his offenses resolved without jail time, against other aspects of this life, like in this case, his nursing studies that were interrupted by the incarceration and caring for his little sister, a US citizen who suffers from a brain disorder.

His case and thousands of others may hinge on a case being argued before the Supreme Court, Carachuri-Rosendo V. Holder, that will hopefully challenge the way our government intrepets immigration laws about drug-related convictions. Unlike the criminal justice system, which must deal with defendants in the jurisdiction where their offenses occurred, immigration authorities can send detainees anywhere in the country, without notice or legal counsel, and start deportation proceedings wherever they choose. The Obama administration has stepped up detention and deportation of so-called criminal aliens, including many legal immigrants with low-level drug convictions. The Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder case, 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 of his children, all United States citizens, were left behind. 86 percent of immigration detainees who face deportation in Texas, a common place we send them, don’t have lawyers and a federal appeal of thier case will cost then $10,000. In Jerry Lemaine’s case, the Texas fifth Circuit Court recently said it would wait for the Supreme decision in the Carachuri before ruling. Even if those decisions go in his favor, however, he is likely to return to the same immigration judge, who could still order him deported. Since all deportations to Haiti have been suspended since a devastating earthquake earlier this year, that will probably mean more detention in Texas.