Reform deportation to stop another murder

Bureaucratic and diplomatic foot-dragging allowed a man convicted of multiple crimes to avoid the deportation mandated by law. He is now charged with a murder in Norwich.

Immigration officials and Congress must address the procedural problems that allowed Jean Jacques to remain in this country by escaping deportation back to his native country of Haiti. Norwich police allege that Mr. Jacques, 40, murdered 25-year-old Casey Chadwick on June 15. Ms. Chadwick was repeatedly stabbed, her body found in the closet of her Norwich home.

Ms. Casey would almost certainly be alive if U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) had deported Mr. Jacques, as required by federal law. The challenge is to make the regulatory changes necessary to prevent a repeat of the events that led to this tragic outcome.

A Haitian national, Mr. Jacques arrived in the United States with thousands of other Haitian refugees following the 1991 overthrow of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. In an earlier court case, the defendant testified that he first escaped by boat to U.S.-controlled Guantanamo, Cuba. A cousin in New York successfully petitioned for Mr. Jacques to gain entry to this country.

Police arrested him in 1996 in connection with a shooting on Laurel Hill Avenue that left a man dead and a woman critically injured. A year later, he was convicted of attempted murder and carrying a pistol without a permit. The judge sentenced Mr. Jacques to 20 years in prison, suspended after 16 years, followed by five years of probation.

His felony conviction violated the Immigration and Nationality Act and in 2002 immigration officials ordered his return to Haiti upon completion of his prison sentence. But when released in 2012, that did not happen.

ICE did take custody of Mr. Jacques when he left prison. However, immigration administrators were unable to provide sufficient documentation to prove to the satisfaction of their counterparts in Haiti that he was a Haitian citizen. Authorities in the impoverished island nation refused to approve his return.

After holding him in custody for several months, ICE freed Mr. Jacques.

In 2014, Connecticut found Mr, Jacques in violation of his parole for relocating his residence without authorization. After spending another six months locked up in a state prison, federal immigration officials again took custody of Mr. Jacques upon his release. Facing the same obstacles to deportation, the agency again released him.

Five months later Mr. Jacques was under arrest for Ms. Chadwick’s murder.

Should immigration authorities have kept Mr. Jacques detained longer and continued deportation efforts? According to the U.S. Supreme Court, they couldn’t. In a 2001 decision, the high court ruled that immigration officials cannot indefinitely hold ex-convicts simply because they have nowhere to send them, limiting such incarceration to six months.

The reasoning in that decision was sound. The U.S. Constitution requires due process and a conviction before the government can take away an individual’s liberty. Open-ended incarceration without a criminal charge violates those rights.

What Congress needs to assure is that the efforts to prepare for deportation begin immediately after initial conviction. Immigration authorities should have been working with their counterparts in Haiti to provide the necessary documentation as soon as the defendant was convicted in 1997. While the effort could have still potentially failed after 15 years of trying (the length of time Mr. Jacques served in prison), it would certainly have stood a better chance of success than awaiting his release to begin the process.

Secondly, the United States needs reciprocal agreements with all allies requiring full cooperation in the process of repatriating foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes. By all appearances, officials in Haiti had no urgency to accept Mr. Jacques’ return. This nation cannot so easily take no for an answer.

The temptation may be to allow this matter to fade away along with the headlines about Mr. Jacques’ arrest. We strongly urge U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Second District, and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who have expressed interest in the issues raised by the case, not to let that happen. It also has the attention of Michael Lawlor, Connecticut undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning.

A foreign national convicted of an aggravated felony should be deported. That’s a straight-forward concept. Necessary is a straight-forward process to achieve it.