Pardons ignored
Federal immigration authorities refuse to recognize state’s criminal pardons
Connecticut is pushing back against a refusal by federal authorities to recognize pardons a state board has issued to legal immigrants for criminal offenses that occurred here, pardons that had been recognized for decades.
Connecticut is pushing back against a refusal by federal immigration authorities to recognize pardons a state board has issued to legal immigrants for criminal offenses that occurred here.
Despite a string of federal court rulings to the contrary, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Immigration Appeals are holding that pardons must come from the president or a governor, Attorney General William Tong said Tuesday. He spoke after appearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston. Tong’s office has filed a friend of the court brief in support of Richard Marvin Thompson of Bridgeport, who faces deportation.
Tong said that since ICE and the appeals bureau have accepted pardons issued by state boards of pardons, it appears Connecticut is being treated unfairly.
Connecticut’s Board of Pardons and Paroles in 2017 pardoned Thompson for a second-degree assault conviction that occurred 17 years ago, when Thompson, a Jamaican immigrant living here legally with his citizen father, was 18.
Since then, Thompson has started a family and worked steadily for years, yet he is now being held in an ICE detention center in Alabama.
Immigration authorities have refused to halt deportation proceedings in Thompson’s case and in a second matter involving Wayzaro Walton, 34, of Hartford, who was pardoned by the state board for a larceny conviction and several misdemeanors that occurred in 2006. Federal appeals courts are reviewing both cases.
As Tong pointed out in court Tuesday morning, the Bureau of Immigration Appeals has for more than 50 years recognized pardons issued by gubernatorial-appointed, executivebranch agencies that serve as a state’s supreme pardoning authority — as Connecticut’s does.
Five states handle pardons exactly as Connecticut does, and 47 states have some kind of advisory board that makes recommendations to, or assists, the governor in the granting of pardons.
In all these instances, the pardons are recognized by ICE and the Bureau of Immigration Appeals as valid and trigger a waiver of the deportation rules — except in Connecticut’s case.
Earlier this year, the Bureau of Immigration Appeals recognized a pardon granted by the state of Alabama, whose process mirrors Connecticut’s, Tong said.
The FBI, which assists in the
background check of people applying for pardons, has never questioned the validity of a Connecticut pardon, which are only issued after an extensive application process and background investigation that take months, said board Chairman Carleton J. Giles, who joined Tong at a news briefing Tuesday.
Since 2015, the 12-member panel has issued 2,000 pardons. In 2018, the board granted pardons in 77 percent of the cases, Giles said. A pardon removes all traces of a criminal arrest and conviction. The board members are appointed by the governor and must have expertise in law enforcement, corrections or another relevant field, Giles said.
Tong was asked if he thought the state was being singled out and punished by the administration of President Donald Trump.
The attorney general has spoken out, filed briefs or joined with coalitions of states in opposition to Trump on several policy fronts, including health care, immigration and gun control. Tong said he didn’t know if the state was being targeted for retribution.
Certainly “the temperature has been cranked up several degrees” when it comes to ICE raids and national immigration policy, he said.
The Bureau of Immigration Appeals’ break with decades of precedent occurred abruptly and, in his opinion, arbitrarily, Tong said.
“It’s news to us that Connecticut’s pardons don’t count, when, for 60 years, they did,” Tong said.