Newsom weighs a pardon for immigrant who shot her husband
MARYSVILLE – Liyah Birru shot and injured her husband after what she says was months of physical abuse. Now she is being processed for deportation to her home country of Ethiopia.
She has one last hope to stay in the United States: California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Newsom has been giving heightened consideration to pardon requests from people targeted for deportation, prompted largely by the Trump administration’s widespread crackdown on immigrants, especially those with criminal records.
Of the 14 people Newsom has pardoned since taking office in January, three have been refugees in the process of being removed from the country by federal immigration officials. The governor took the time to call one of those immigrants and spoke to the family of another in federal custody.
“I have petitions for many, many others that are pending or we’re considering,” Newsom said recently. “Good people can disagree, but I will continue to consider that and put a lot of weight on that – deportation.” Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, issued 273 pardons in his final year in office, with at least 19 going to people who faced or feared deportation.
A pardon from the governor restores legal rights and, in most cases, eliminates the grounds for deportation of immigrants who are legal permanent residents.
Newsom has repeatedly criticized President Donald Trump as an antiimmigrant “demagogue” who stokes racial division to spread fear and anxiety, and in response has adopted a policy established by Brown to use the governor’s pardon authority – granted to the chief executive by the California Constitution – to shield certain refugees and legal immigrants with a criminal history from facing deportation.
Birru’s case, however, promises to test the traditional bounds of executive clemency in California. The act of forgiveness has been almost exclusively reserved for people who have spent years proving they were fit, productive members of society after being released from prison.
The three immigrants Newsom pardoned had all been out of prison for more than a decade. That was long enough to demonstrate that they had been “living an upright life,” Newsom said in his official pardons for each.
Birru hasn’t had that chance.
The 35-year-old Ethiopian native, who came to the United States in 2014 as a legal resident, has been behind bars since shooting her husband in the back eight months after her arrival. After completing her four-year sentence in state prison, Birru was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and prepped for deportation.
Birru’s attorney, Anoop Prasad, said Newsom has an opportunity to correct an injustice against a woman with no other history of violence or wrongdoing, even while in prison.
Birru’s husband, Silas D’aloisio, has denied abusing her. But Prasad argues in the pardon application that Birru felt trapped in an abusive marriage and shot her husband in desperation, seeing no other means of escape.