In a case out of the District of Connecticut, a judge finally recognized and addressed the delays in deportation resulting in the service of additional time by extraditees who have already completed their sentences. The following colloquy is from the sentencing in that case.
MR. ZAPP: My co-counsel reminded me of this fact, that I would like to bring to the attention of every federal judge, this is what happens: Your Honor sentences a defendant to X amount of time, let’s say 37 months. When he [the defendant] does his time, he is then removed to immigration. And for reasons that I still do not understand, these people stay in there anywhere between 30 to 60 days.
THE COURT: Yes.
MR. ZAPP: And it is completely unjust because the ICE [Immigration Department] people say he’s not in our jurisdiction. But I’ve written to ICE and said, ‘but you go to federal prisons, you serve them [defendants] with Orders to Show Cause [Why They should not be Deported,] why can’t you spend another five minutes to process them and if they agree to be deported, on the day of their release, they can be deported,” or I’ll give them [Immigration] seven days.
THE COURT: Yes. I’ve had this issue, this for Ms. Lake [the prosecutor], I’ve had this issue come up, when somebody has been here illegally and they’ve committed a crime, and frankly I’ve said that that’s your immigration problem and it’s not your criminal problem.
MR. ZAPP: Right.
THE COURT: But that’s not the case here. He was extradited.
MR. ZAPP: Absolutely.
THE COURT: To me, it doesn’t seem right to extradite someone and then keep them for 60 days longer than their sentence. So while ordinarily I would say, that’s your immigration problem, that’s your problem, it’s not the criminal law’s problem, I’m not sure that that’s the right case here, and so Ms. Lake [prosecutor] will have to respond to that.
MR. ZAPP: Right. I’ve had very little sympathy, exactly, for the illegal alien — not that I think it’s not unjust but at the same time those are the wages of illegal alienage. That is not the case [here], and I’ve gotten nowhere with ICE. So I really appeal to courts, if they [the judges] thought they were going to give somebody X, then give them X minus 60 days because he’s [the defendant] going to be in there [immigration jail] serving time in maximum security because he’s considered high risk, and he’s probably the only innocent guy in the jail at least, he’s not awaiting sentence, just awaiting processing. And then of course to top it off, 11 Russian spies were deported in six hours. [Note: In New York City, eleven Russian spies were arrested and as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia, these eleven spies pled guilty at 2 p.m., were sentenced at 4 p.m., and were on a plane to Russian at 9 p.m.—yet ICE insists that it cannot process deportable aliens any faster than thirty to sixty days which just shows you that the government can do anything the government wants to do.]
THE COURT: There you go. See, if he had come from Russia, then we could make an exchange. But unfortunately, Colombia is not that case.
MS LAKE [Prosecutor]: Yes, your Honor. I’ll address the question of the ICE [deportation] confinement first. So we don’t oppose the idea of taking into consideration that he will be in ICE confinement for a time after his federal time has been served, but we just want to note that this wouldn’t be within the guidelines; this would just be a consideration for your Honor.
THE COURT: Yes, non guidelines.
MS. LAKE: And we don’t know exactly how much time that is, which is something that obscures.
THE COURT: And it seems to vary, based on my experience. It’s ordinarily not less than 30 days, but seems to be, they’re gone within 60. So it’s not like they spend six months around, but given the fact he was extradited here, it just seems “piling on” to give him some extra time, and I appreciate the government’s position on that.
. . . . .
THE COURT: [The sentence] won’t be the 37 months that Mr. Zapp wants, and it won’t be the 57 months that Ms. Lake would like. It seems to me that the truth [probably is somewhere in between, in terms of whether people were coerced or not. And I’m also going to deduct two months for the fact that you will be detained pending
deportation.
. . . .
[The sentence was imposed by Judge Mark Kravitz in the District Court of Conn. on August 9, 2010, under indictment 3:08CR97(MRK).]
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