Ravi Ragbir’s Deportation Halted At Last Minute

NEW YORK, NY — Federal immigration officials agreed to put Ravi Ragbir’s deportation on hold Friday after his lawyers filed a new lawsuit in federal court, keeping the lauded activist in the country at the last minute.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan agreed to temporarily stay Ragbir’s deportation after his legal team, along with local and nationwide advocacy groups, filed a First Amendment lawsuit Friday accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other officials of targeting immigrant-activists.

Ragbir was scheduled to be deported to Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday, but no longer has to report to ICE at all, his supporters say. Activists will instead hold a rally at 9 a.m. Saturday outside the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service office at Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan.

“Like so many people who are living in this country under the threat of deportation, I know how important it is to raise our voices against the injustices in the system,” Ragbir said in a statement.

“This lawsuit is not just about me, it is about all of the members of our community who are speaking out in our struggle for immigrant rights.”

The move was a major victory for immigrant-rights activists, who have fought to keep Ragbir in the New York since ICE arrested him Jan. 11 at a routine check-in. It came just over an hour before a federal judge in New Jersey heard arguments on whether he could also put a stay on Ragbir's deportation. That hearing ended without a decision, Ragbir's legal team said.

ICE did not comment on the stay on Ragbir's deportation, but maintained that it does not target immigrants just because they advocate for certain positions. Most people the agency arrests have been convicted of or charged with crimes, but authorities will seek out anyone who's in the country illegally, said Matthew Albence, the executive associate director of ICE's enforcement operations.

"ICE will no longer exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement," Albence said in a statement. "All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and – if found removable by final order – removal from the United States."

The Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment.

Ragbir is the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, a group that aims to protect immigrants from deportation. He has lived in the U.S. since 1991. A judge ordered him deported in 2006 after he served prison time for a 2001 federal wire fraud conviction.

ICE allowed him to stay in the country with regular check-ins until officials decided to arrest and deport him in January, saying he lacked a legal basis to remain in the U.S. He spent 18 days jailed by ICE, first in Miami, then in upstate Orange County, before a federal judge in Manhattan ordered him freed Jan. 29, calling his detention "unnecessarily cruel."

In the month since his arrest, Ragbir has gone from a respected leader among local immigration activists to a figure in the nationwide immigrant-rights movement and, to some, a case study of how far President Donald Trump's administration would go in enforcing immigration laws to the letter.

Ragbir's case has garnered national media attention. His arrest sparked protests at which 18 people, including two City Council members, were arrested, prompting an oversight hearing this week on how the NYPD patrols protests the extent to which police work with ICE. Mayor Bill de Blasio asked ICE in a letter Wednesday to halt Ragbir's deportaiton.

Ragbir's lawyers are fighting in New Jersey federal court to overturn the criminal conviction on which his deportation was predicated. They have asked U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty for a writ of coram nobis, a ruling through which a court can correct its past errors.

The jury in Ragbir's case received instructions that were too broad and his defense team didn't do its due diligence in representing him, his lawyers now argue in court papers. Lawyers for the government, though, say Ragbir waited to long to file this challenge, that rejects arguments that there were problems with his trial.

Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who was arrested at the protests last month, said the stay on Ragbir's removal, while encouraging, "is not a signal" for activists "to become complacent."

"News of Ravi's extended stay in this country is not only a reason to celebrate, but proof that our work here is not done," Rodriguez said in a statement.