Ravi Ragbir was a legal immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago when he was arrested in 1999 for wire fraud in connection with a subprime mortgage scam involving forged signatures and stolen home loans. After spending several years in federal prison, he received a final deportation order but managed to get it repeatedly stayed. Ragbir built a new career for himself as an activist for deportable aliens such as himself, and he became executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition.
Ragbir s detention on January 11 was anticipated. He attended his scheduled check-in at ICE s Federal Plaza offices with a large group of protestors, including elected officials, and he filmed a valediction the day before, encouraging his supporters to continue the struggle. But Judge Forrest found that the government subjected Ragbir to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home, and work. And sent away. We are not that country. She ordered his immediate release.
I wonder what a half-way decent empirical analysis of whom it is proposed be given legal status would tell us.