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Sandra Castaneda spent 19 years in jail for a homicide she didn’t commit.
However when the California courts overturned her conviction in July 2021, the 40-year-old Los Angeles lady didn’t stroll free. As an alternative, she was picked up by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) brokers and brought to a federal detention middle the place she is now going through deportation to Mexico, a rustic she left at age 9.
Castaneda has been in Ice detention for 9 months, trapped in a Kafkaesque authorized nightmare during which attorneys for the Division of Homeland Safety, which oversees Ice, argue she must be deported because of the authentic homicide cost despite the fact that the California courts and an immigration choose have stated that her conviction was invalid.
“I’m caught right here. There’s nothing to do all day and I get overwhelmed,” Castaneda stated in a current name from inside a detention middle within the state of Georgia. “It’s like nothing applies to [Ice]. They’ll do no matter they need. It makes me indignant … I’m simply losing time right here.”
Immigrants’ rights advocates say her case is awfully unjust – however removed from distinctive.
The US has lengthy deported immigrants based mostly on their legal data, routinely detaining folks convicted of a variety of offenses, main folks like Castaneda, who’ve authorized standing, to be threatened with removing.
However because the US justice system reckons with its previous and varied states have handed reform legal guidelines meant to proper the wrongs of mass incarceration and unjust convictions, the immigration system has not caught up.
That implies that throughout the US tens of hundreds of individuals through the years have confronted deportation even after courts have overturned their convictions, granted expungements and erased the offenses from their legal data, authorized specialists estimate. And lately, the US authorities has actively thwarted new state reforms meant to repair this drawback and cease deportations based mostly on flawed convictions.
“There’s discrimination baked into the system at each stage,” stated Andrew Wachtenheim, supervising legal professional with the Immigrant Protection Mission (IDP), an advocacy group that has challenged US deportation insurance policies. “You’ve got very racist state legal legal guidelines which were doing injury to communities of shade for many years … and now you lastly have some localities going through these injustices and enacting desperately wanted laws to alleviate the implications, however for non-citizens, the reforms aren’t taking place. It’s a second stage of injustice.”
‘I believed I’d die in jail’
Castaneda, who got here to the US with a inexperienced card in 1991, grew up in South Central LA, a neighborhood that struggled with gang violence. She had a tough childhood, along with her mom leaving her to reside with kin at a younger age, however she stayed out of hassle till 10 Might 2002.
Castaneda, then 20, was driving a gaggle of mates to a restaurant that night when certainly one of them, who was affiliated with an area gang, fired with out warning at a rival gang, injuring one individual and killing one other, her attorneys wrote in a current submitting. The passengers and shooter within the automotive all fled on foot, however Castaneda stopped a number of blocks away, and was apprehended by police.
Prosecutors didn’t allege that she took half within the killing or had any function in planning it, however she was convicted of homicide and tried homicide below the state’s “felony homicide rule”, which on the time dictated that anybody concerned in a felony when a loss of life happens can face the identical penalties as the one that dedicated the act.
At age 21, Castaneda, who had no legal document, was given a life sentence with the opportunity of parole after 40 years. The shooter was by no means charged.
“I had mentally ready myself to die in jail, as a lifer … so I attempted to do good for myself and for others,” stated Castaneda, who received a number of levels whereas incarcerated and served as a mentor, peer educator and advocate for terminally ailing folks behind bars.
In recent times, officers throughout the California legal justice system acknowledged the injustice of Castaneda’s conviction and her achievements: in 2019, the top of the California division of corrections really useful her sentence be lowered; in 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom commuted her sentence altogether, giving her a chance at early parole; and in 2021, a choose dominated that her conviction be totally dismissed and he or she be instantly launched, based mostly on a brand new California regulation that dismantled components of the felony homicide rule as a consequence of considerations about unjust homicide sentences for folks not chargeable for the deaths.
On 27 July final 12 months, the day she was scheduled to come back residence, California jail guards handed her over to Ice. Colby Lenz, an advocate with the California Coalition for Girls Prisoners, who has identified Castaneda for years, was ready exterior to select her up and watched as an Ice van drove her away. “It was completely devastating, particularly understanding that she was about to face a very lengthy wrestle and extra horrible situations in detention.”
Ice officers initially informed Castaneda that she can be launched residence to her household, with an ankle monitor, as a result of Ice had no out there mattress in California: “I used to be so blissful, I used to be lastly going to go residence to my household.”
However later that day, the Ice officer stated, “‘I discovered you a spot – you’re going to Atlanta,’” she recalled. “I simply began crying. I couldn’t imagine they’d ship me to the opposite aspect of the nation. All my assist is in California. I don’t have no person in Georgia.”
‘Second stage of injustice’
There’s no good knowledge on deportations after convictions had been invalidated, however immigration attorneys say it’s been a standard incidence for many years and continues to emerge when states enact new reforms.
The challenges stem from a US Division of Justice ruling within the late Nineties and early 2000s, dictating that if a non-citizen’s conviction was dismissed as a consequence of a “procedural or substantive defect within the underlying legal proceedings” (corresponding to an easy wrongful conviction uncovered by DNA), then the person would not be deportable. But when somebody’s conviction was erased as a consequence of “rehabilitation” or sure different reforms, the requirements maintain they need to nonetheless be deported.
That call applies to many non-citizens throughout the nation who get their data expunged yearly, together with individuals who have efficiently accomplished probation and different packages, and individuals who received outdated marijuana instances and associated costs tossed out as a consequence of reform measures meant to handle the “conflict on medication”. These expungements wipe a person’s document clear, eradicating boundaries to housing and employment, however the DoJ considers them irrelevant for many immigration functions.
“So far as the state is worried, these convictions are invalid and don’t exist, however of us are nonetheless getting detained and deported,” stated Anoop Prasad, an Asian Regulation Caucus (ALC) employees legal professional representing Castaneda.
Final 12 months, for instance, a New Jersey human trafficking survivor nonetheless confronted deportation even after her convictions had been dropped as soon as she proved in state court docket that she was victimized.
California, New York and different states have handed legal guidelines lately to assist folks dismiss convictions and guarantee they’re shielded from deportation, however the federal authorities has fought to bypass them.
“Each legal authorized reform that we’ve handed, I’ve seen federal immigration attorneys try and argue that these reforms don’t move muster in immigration court docket. It’s infuriating,” stated Rose Cahn, senior employees legal professional on the Immigrant Authorized Useful resource Middle (ILRC).
For months, this has been the case for Castaneda. In October 2021, US attorneys argued that her “conviction stays a conviction for immigration functions”. An immigration choose sided with Castaneda in November and stated he didn’t imagine she was deportable, although final week known as for an additional listening to on the matter. And though Castaneda’s attorneys have obtained additional documentation from a California choose making clear she not had a deportable offense, DHS remains to be preventing to take away her – and refusing to launch her on bond as she fights her case.
Stress on Biden
Immigrant advocates are pressuring the Biden administration and state officers to do extra to cease deportations of individuals with dismissed convictions and outdated legal data.
A coalition of advocates has urged Biden’s legal professional basic, Merrick Garland, to revive a rule undone by the Trump administration that enabled some immigrants to keep away from deportation if their legal sentences had been retroactively lowered. Some offenses are solely deportable if the sentence is a sure size.
Trump’s legal professional basic, William Barr, reversed this longstanding precedent in 2019.
To date, the Biden administration has declined to alter the rule or enact insurance policies directing immigration officers to broadly acknowledge conviction dismissals.
Spokespeople for the DoJ and White Home declined to remark, and representatives of Ice and the DHS didn’t reply to inquiries about Castaneda’s case and the associated deportation insurance policies.
Activists in California have additionally fought to cease the state from transferring folks from prisons to Ice, arguing that states have the discretion to finish the observe and that individuals who served their time mustn’t face additional punishment. To date, the governor has refused; Castaneda was certainly one of 2,600 folks handed over to Ice from California prisons from January 2020 via November 2021, in response to knowledge obtained by ALC. (The governor’s workplace didn’t reply to an inquiry.)
Castaneda, hundreds of miles from her household, doesn’t know what is going to occur if she loses her case: “I don’t see myself in Mexico. It’s arduous for me to face the truth that I may need to go, as a result of I don’t know a life there.”
After the entire acknowledgments of her accomplishments behind bars, Ice’s refusal to even launch her on bond has weighed on her: “They are saying I’m a ‘security danger for the general public’, and it frustrates me, since you’re specializing in my first costs. They’re not seeing the nice issues I’ve finished. What else would you like?” As soon as launched, she has dozens of members of the family and mates able to assist her in LA and a non-profit advocacy job lined up.
Her message to the Biden administration? “Give us a second likelihood, enable us to do it proper, to show ourselves. The legal guidelines are altering, but it surely’s solely on paper. They don’t honor that. They don’t honor the truth that you might have household right here. Test our data and you’ll see we tried to alter our lives. Don’t simply ship us again to what we don’t know.”
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