Noncitizens are being deported without final removal orders, which lawyers around the country have told NY1 is flat-out illegal.<\/p>\n
Specifically, NY1 has heard from attorneys in New York, Louisiana, Texas and Illinois where that fact pattern has occurred.<\/p>\n
Additionally, there are multiple cases NY1 has heard about from lawyers in New York City about these kinds of deportations.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Immigration lawyers and a former DOJ official told NY1 noncitizens typically cannot be deported unless they have final removal orders
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However, NY1 has learned of several instances where people are being deported without that declaration from an immigration judge\u00a0
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One man has been in El Salvador for nearly half a year, in what his lawyer said is an illegal deportation<\/p>\n
There were 132 cases where people were deported and received final removal orders after they were already gone, according to NY1\u2019s analysis of hundreds of thousands of lines of data<\/p>\n
For a noncitizen in the U.S. at least two years, the deportation process begins in immigration court following an arrest, which immigration lawyers tell NY1 should be followed by a trial where one can make their case before an immigration judge on why they shouldn\u2019t be deported.<\/p>\n
If the judge rules that the noncitizen should be deported, that means issuing a final removal order. Only then can immigration authorities send the person out of the United States.<\/p>\n
Marvin Mata Cruz said immigration agents pulled over his car on an early October morning on Long Island while he and his brother, Mario, were on their way to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018If you don\u2019t come out of the car, I\u2019m going to break the windows,\u2019\u201d Marvin recalled.<\/p>\n
Marvin said Mario complied, was placed in handcuffs, and taken away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s not fair,\u201d Marvin said. \u201cHe was doing everything okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mario crossed the southern border into the U.S. in 2018 by himself when he was 17 years old, coming from El Salvador.<\/p>\n
A year later, he obtained Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) status, according to records NY1 reviewed.<\/p>\n
SIJ status can be filed by someone who is under 21 at the time. A family court judge, followed by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services within the Department of Homeland Security, will rule whether the person endured abuse, abandonment or neglect. It puts applicants on the path to apply for a green card.<\/p>\n
For Mario, his green card is pending, according to federal records. He has no criminal record, according to his lawyer, Ed Cuccia. And yet, ICE arrested him and flew him to a detention facility in Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe called me and say, \u2019I think today they\u2019re going to move me again,\u2019\u201d Marvin said. \u201cI told him, \u2018Let\u2019s talk tomorrow once you arrive in a different place.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But when Mario called, he was in El Salvador.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe physical deportation of Mario was as illegal as you can get,\u201d Cuccia said.<\/p>\n
He said Mario did not have a final removal order when he was deported.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t my will because I had not signed anything,\u201d Mario said in an interview translated from Spanish over FaceTime.<\/p>\n
If Mario had signed voluntary departure paperwork, it would have nullified the need for a final removal order. He said he never signed anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE should have, on day one, realized what they did, and, on day two, had Mario back on a plane to the United States,\u201d Cuccia said.<\/p>\n
Yet nearly six months later, when Marvin opens the door to Mario\u2019s room, his bed is made. His clothes are all still folded in his dresser, but the only way he can see him is by FaceTime.<\/p>\n
While Cuccia battles the government in court, Mario said he wants to come back to the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had everything there,\u201d Mario said.<\/p>\n
That includes his pending green card application, which Cuccia said could have been granted by now had he not been deported.<\/p>\n
The Department of Justice did not respond to NY1\u2019s request for comment when asked specifically about the details of Mario\u2019s arrest and deportation.<\/p>\n
However, at least one former high-ranking DOJ official gave her first television interview to NY1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that that is contrary to the law,\u201d Sheila McNulty said about Mario\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
McNulty had a 16-year career at the DOJ. She said the Trump administration fired her without cause on President Donald Trump\u2019s first day back in office. She is now suing for wrongful termination.<\/p>\n
For the last two years of her time at the DOJ, she was the chief immigration judge \u2014 a large part of her job centered on ensuring judges follow the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure where the authority [the government] is getting,\u201d she said about deporting people without final removal orders. \u201cI don\u2019t know why they would be able to think that they could just remove someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Court records show a pending lawsuit about the government deporting a 16-year-old, who was given the alias \u201cElias\u201d in the filing, to Guatemala under similar circumstances as Mario.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis removal was lawless: Defendants had no removal order for Elias, nor did they even attempt to obtain one,\u201d his lawyers argued in the filing in the District of Columbia late last year.<\/p>\n
The DOJ did not respond to NY1\u2019s questions about this case, either. There is no way to track how often this has happened nationwide.<\/p>\n
However, there were 132 cases where people were deported and received final removal orders after they were already gone, according to NY1\u2019s analysis of hundreds of thousands of lines of data about ICE arrests since Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n
Two of those occurred in New York City, according to the spreadsheets provided by the Deportation Data Project, a nonprofit that files public records requests for immigration data from the federal government and then posts the information on its website.<\/p>\n
NY1 showed this data to multiple immigration lawyers and a former immigration judge who couldn\u2019t think of an explanation as to why people would be deported and then issued final removal orders after the fact.<\/p>\n
And, despite NY1 sending the data Monday, there will not be any clarity from the government either.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Executive Office for Immigration Review does not comment on third-party reporting of EOIR data,\u201d a spokesperson for EOIR, within the Department of Justice, said.<\/p>\n
In the past, the Deportation Data Project has told NY1 it simply republishes the data sent by the government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noncitizens are being deported without final removal orders, which lawyers around the country have told NY1 is flat-out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[109,25,3801,2301,9,24,12,63,87,134,136,135,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-205461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-eric-feldman","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-staten-island","18":"tag-staten-island-headlines","19":"tag-staten-island-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}