The lawyer who saved Lennon from deportation

Leon Wildes 1933–2024

When Leon Wildes first consulted with the client who would bring him to national prominence, he was fuzzy on exactly who’d summoned him. An opera buff, he told his wife he’d met “Jack Lemmon and Yoko Moto.” But while unfamiliar with the Beatles, Wildes knew immigration law, and from 1972 to 1975 he successfully fought the Nixon administration’s efforts to deport John Lennon. Moving to New York with Yoko Ono in 1971, Lennon had obtained a waiver that allowed him to enter on a temporary visa despite his 1968 London marijuana conviction. As the waiver neared expiration, Lennon was ordered to leave but opted to fight. Wildes pored through government records and showed that the deportation effort was motivated by President Richard Nixon’s personal animosity and the administration’s fears that the leftist, antiwar icon was influencing American youth. The landmark ruling that reprieved Lennon said, “The courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds.”

Wildes was born in the coal-mining town of Olyphant, Pa., where his parents ran a clothing store, said The New York Times. After attending Yeshiva University and NYU Law School, “he quickly gravitated toward immigration law,” working for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and then starting his own firm in 1960. In 1972, a law school friend connected him with Lennon. At the time, Nixon was seeking a second term, said The Times (U.K.), and 18- to 21-year-olds had newly won the vote, “creating a large and potentially troublesome electorate.” Using the Freedom of Information Act, Wildes turned up a letter from Sen. Strom Thurmond advising the Nixon administration that Lennon was a threat and should be deported. Wildes also had Lennon and Ono appear together in court and dress alike, “because tearing a husband away from his wife would look bad.” Public support for the couple grew as they “argued their case on television talk shows.”

After Lennon’s death in 1980, Wildes “remained close to Yoko,” said the Associated Press. He continued to practice immigration law, helping secure green cards and citizenship for thousands of immigrants, and he eventually taught at Yeshiva University’s law school. Wildes said his friendship with the couple transformed his professional life, his musical taste, and even his look. “I bought my first pair of jeans” during the trial, he said, “and let my hair grow.”