Fury at legal aid denial for immigs
AN UPSTATE newlywed and expectant dad who was arrested at a routine ICE meeting in Manhattan three months ago, apparently due to an error by the feds, has finally been released.
Joel Guerrero posted a heartfelt message on Facebook on Thursday after returning home from detention the night before.
“I’m very thankful to my brothers for their presence in moments of troubles,” wrote the carpenter, originally from the Dominican Republic.
“Above everybody I’m super thankful for God, his grace is an amazing Grace.”
He called his pregnant wife, Jessica Decker Guerrero, an “awesome person.”
“Even being pregnant this person fought for me endlessly without any thoughts of giving up,” he wrote. “Thank you Jessica Guerrero for being the most amazing wife, I love you babe!”
It wasn’t immediately clear why ICE officials released Guerrero, 37, of New Paltz, after 10 weeks of detention, but court records obtained by the Daily News show that the agency erred when it claimed he had been convicted of a felony drug offense.
The court judgment from North Carolina said the prior conviction was only a misdemeanor.
Just days after taking office, President Trump signed two executive orders designed to help make good on a campaign promise to increase deportations and strengthen border security.
Under the directives, Trump essentially put into place measures to prioritize the expulsion of millions of undocumented people convicted of or even just charged with any offense.
Speaking to The News in late March, Guerrero’s wife vowed to never give up in her quest to clear her husband's name.
“This has been the worst three weeks of my entire life, but we continue to work with lawyers and hold on to hope this will be resolved — the sooner the better since I’m due June 1. It’s just been a nightmare,” Jessica said.
In her own Facebook message Wednesday, Jessica posted photos of her reunion with her husband.
“Still overwhelmed with love and happiness,” she wrote. “Welcome home sweetheart, I love you so much.”
As The News previously reported, Guerrero had been reporting to ICE officials every six months without a problem for the past six years.
When he went for his routine meeting on Feb. 28 he was detained without warning, his relatives said.
His green card had been revoked over the decade-old pot conviction and a court date he had inadvertently missed, the relatives said.
Jessica — a U.S. citizen and graduate student at SUNY New Paltz — said she was “shocked” when they detained Guerrero on the spot.
“We had no idea that that was going to happen,” she told The News. “When I asked why, the officer said, ‘The new administration is telling us to enforce all orders.’”
Jessica said the couple learned for the first time in March that a judge had issued a deportation order for Guerrero in 2014.
“Had he been informed, obviously he would have done something. We are building a life. He didn’t know this was in place,” she said.
“We got married last month. I’m six months pregnant. He’s working. He pays taxes. He was doing everything right.”
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MAYOR DE BLASIO’S plan to exclude immigrants with certain convictions from a new legal defense program is an affront to due process, legal service providers and City Council members argued Thursday.
“We are not going to let him play games and try to cover his right flank or left flank — I can’t figure it out from day to day which flank he’s trying to cover,” Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) said. “We stand for the simple proposition that everyone facing something as important as the process of being deported should have a right to an attorney.”
Legal providers went from thanking de Blasio for boosting funding to immigrant legal services to $16 million in his proposed budget, to assailing him for saying the city wouldn’t pay for lawyers to help immigrants facing deportation if they’d been convicted of a list of crimes on which the city cooperates with federal immigration authorities.
Immigrants with such convictions have been getting free legal help under an existing program, the New York Immigrant Unity Project, funded by the City Council and staffed by the Legal Aid Society, Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defenders.
At a Council budget hearing after the rally, Nisha Agarwal, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said she could not break down how much of the $16 million would go to detained people and nondetained people facing deportation, or unaccompanied minors — but acknowledged people with the convictions named in the detainer law wouldn’t be among them.
“We do not feel, the administration, that city taxpayer dollars should be used toward representation for individuals with that, those criminal history,” she said.
Agarwal argued the city wanted to spread resources to others facing deportation.