Man to be freed early now in immigration custody

DENVER — A Colorado man whose 98year prison term was cut short by a judge has been detained by immigration officials just as he was set to be released.

Rene Lima-Marin, 38, was released to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Denver on Wednesday, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

He was convicted in 2000 of multiple robbery, kidnapping and burglary counts after he and another man robbed two video stores at gunpoint. Lima-Marin was mistakenly released on parole in 2008. He then held a steady job installing glass, got married and has a stepson, Justus, 10, and son JoJo, 7, who was born while he was out of prison.

Authorities realized the mistake in 2014 and returned him to prison.

A judge on Tuesday ordered Lima Marin’s release, saying it would be “draconian” to keep him in prison and that he had paid his debt to society. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement can request that an inmate suspected of an immigration violation be held after their release from jail or prison under a form referred to as a hold or a detainer.

Jasmine Lima-Marin had decorated her home with balloons and said she was on standby to drive to the prison where he was incarcerated to pick him up.

“Everyone is completely devastated,” his Denver-based attorney, Kimberly Diego, said. “Everything has been turned on its head.”

Diego added that she was scrambling to find him an immigration attorney.

Lima-Marin came to the United States from Cuba with his parents when he was a toddler during the 1980 Mariel boat lift, but he never applied for citizenship, his father, Eli Borges, told The Denver Post.

The so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy sent back Cubans intercepted at sea but gave those who reached land an automatic path to legal residency. Before leaving office in January, President Barack Obama announced the end of that policy as part of normalizing ties between Cuba and the U.S.