’90 DRUG OFFENSE PUT HIM IN LIMBO

Gov. Cuomo’s pardon of Carlos Cardona demonstrates the incredible power that states have to help protect their residents from the lack of due process in our immigration system. A Ground Zero recovery worker and the husband of a U.S. citizen, Cardona faces imminent deportation based on a 27-year-old conviction. Thanks to a longstanding provision in federal immigration law, this pardon may give him a chance to reopen his deportation case and hopefully get a fair day in immigration court. The federal law is not absolute — only some grounds of deportation are waived by full and unconditional presidential or gubernatorial pardons — but it is a small ray of hope in an otherwise broken immigration system. The need for some recognition of redemption is particularly acute in immigration law. For immigrants like Cardona who already have paid their debt to society following a past criminal conviction, deportation comes as a second, much more severe penalty. Federal law often deprives immigration judges of the power to consider an immigrant’s family ties and contributions to community before issuing a deportation order based on a criminal conviction. No matter how valuable one’s contributions to family and society have been, immigration law is often unforgiving. The pardon process, however, gives the President and state governors a chance to reconsider the severity of consequences a person faces for a past conviction. And federal immigration law, for all of its flaws, at least recognizes the power of such pardons to erase certain grounds of deportation. This includes deportation for “aggravated felonies” — a convoluted legal category that includes offenses that are neither aggravated nor felonies, yet carry the most serious immigration consequences. As a result, pardons have long been relied upon to help immigrants get the kind of fair consideration that they would otherwise be deprived of. New York, in fact, has perhaps the longest history of using pardon power to protect immigrant New Yorkers. Back in the 1930s, when the public became aware of the harsh family separation caused by deportation laws, Gov. Herbert Lehman used his pardon power to help over 100 immigrants who faced separation from their families based on old offenses. Gov. Cuomo’s leadership in this area comes at a time where such acts of redemption are needed now more than ever. Das is an associate professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law.