Errors by ICE Lead to Wrongful Detention of Houston Chef for Over 2 Months

This Houston Press article reports on the horrific experience of Houston chef David Rodriguez, a lawful permanent resident who was wrongfully detained by ICE for 78 days over the holidays after returning from a trip to Belize with his wife for their honeymoon.  Rodriguez is the head chef at the Tout Suite Cafe in Houston, TX.  The article reports that when he arrived in Miami, CBP officials flagged him for a prior conviction that officials determined was a “crime involving moral turpitude,”  (CIMT) thereby making him subject to deportation.  (Side note:  a single CIMT doesn’t actually make a lawful permanent resident deportable unless committed within 5 years of admission and involving a sentence of a year or more, which wouldn’t apply if Rodriguez obtained LPR status at age 12.  It is possible, however, that CBP officials applied the less generous grounds of inadmissibility to Rodriguez because he was an “arriving alien,” in which case a single CIMT not falling with the petty offense exception might have validly triggered the enforcement action, or that CBP officials incorrectly believed his prior conviction was an “aggravated felony,” which would have led to similar results).  

The problem is — as Chef Rodriguez’s immigration lawyer ultimately found — the prior conviction wasn’t a CIMT, or any kind of deportable (or inadmissible) offense at all. But it took over 2 months to convince a judge to make that determination, after he had spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas in an immigration jail.  

Chef Rodriguez’s case highlights ongoing concerns that advocates and scholars have over the risk of error when low-level officials make complicated immigration determinations (including when a prior conviction is or is not a removable offense), as well as the profound effect that access to counsel and immigration detention have on people’s ability to raise their legal claims in the immigration context.  

-JKoh