CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Prisoners from Mariel win release
The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that Mariel refugees and other foreign
nationals never 'technically' admitted into
the country cannot be held indefinitely.
By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com.
Posted on Thu, Jan. 13, 2005.
About 2,000 foreign nationals in indefinite
detention around the country, including
700 to 1,000 Mariel refugees from Cuba,
must be released as a result of a U.S. Supreme
Court decision Wednesday.
The 7-2 ruling, written by Justice Antonin
Scalia, struck down one of the last measures
used by the government to hold the migrants,
who are convicts, without any hope of release.
Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice
William Rehnquist dissented.
The ruling was not a total surprise. Most
immigration-law experts had expected the
Supreme Court to follow its 2001 rejection
of indefinite detention for those who could
not be deported because their countries
would not take them back.
Despite the 2001 ruling, the government
continued to hold the group of Mariel refugees
by claiming, under a complicated immigration-law
theory, that they had never ''technically''
entered the United States. The government
classified those refugees as ''excludable''
and ''inadmissible'' because they had been
convicted of crimes and their immigration
paroles were revoked.
Scalia, in Wednesday's majority opinion,
indicated that the government misinterpreted
the high court's 2001 opinion, which said
the government could hold deportable foreign
nationals for no more than six months.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a concurring
opinion, wrote that the government could
detain foreign nationals for more than six
months as long as it had "reasonable
grounds to believe an alien has engaged
in certain terrorist or other dangerous
activity.''
In his dissent, Justice Thomas said that
migrants deemed ''inadmissible'' do not
have the same constitutional rights as other
migrants. He also said that the 2001 ruling
rejecting indefinite detention was wrong.
SOME 'EXCLUDABLE'
Many Mariel refugees were classified as
''excludable'' after the 1980 boatlift from
the Cuban port of Mariel, but the majority
were paroled, and most obtained permanent
U.S. residence and citizenship.
A few, however, were convicted of crimes
here and were deemed "excludable.''
One of them was Daniel Benítez,
a Hialeah resident, whose case was one of
two that the high court reviewed to make
its decision Wednesday.
Benítez sought a green card in 1985.
He was rejected because he had been convicted
of grand theft in Florida. He was subsequently
convicted of additional felonies, including
armed robbery, armed burglary, aggravated
battery and unlawful possession of a firearm.
His immigration parole was revoked in 1993,
and he was ordered deported in 1994. But
Cuba would not take him back.
Federal authorities transferred him to
a halfway house in Miami by the time the
Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the
case last Oct. 13. He was released a few
days later, moved in with his brother in
Hialeah, and began to work as an electrician's
assistant.
Although free, Benítez could have
been put back in indefinite detention had
the Supreme Court not ruled as it did. Benítez
can still be detained if he violates parole
conditions, if he is convicted of a new
felony, or if political conditions change
in Cuba and Havana agrees to take back Cubans
ordered deported by the United States.
IN DIFFERENT PRISONS
The 700 to 1,000 Mariel refugees still
in custody are in federal prisons across
the country. Benítez was last held
at a facility near Denver. It is unclear
if any indefinitely detained migrants are
held in South Florida, although no known
cases have surfaced locally in recent years.
''I think this is a victory for Jehovah
God, who gave us freedom and the right to
be free,'' Benítez, a Jehovah's Witness,
told The Herald in a telephone interview
from the office of Miami lawyer Emilio de
la Cal.
John Mills, a Jacksonville lawyer who argued
the case before the Supreme Court, said
the ruling "prevents the president
and the executive branch from abusing their
authority and arbitrarily depriving a human
being of his liberty.''
Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties
Union, who championed the cause of indefinitely
detained Mariel refugees, welcomed the ruling.
''It's a vindication of the position we've
taken all along, that the government was
violating the court's [2001] decision by
continuing to detain these individuals,''
she told The Herald.
''It's good to know that, in the face of
9/11, the Supreme Court won't hesitate to
issue a just ruling on behalf of immigrants,''
said Cheryl Little, executive director of
the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy
Center.
The government's Department of Homeland
Security has yet to announce how it will
proceed with releases in the cases affected
by Wednesday's ruling. Each case, however,
would be handled individually.
THE STORY SO FAR
o The 1980 Mariel boatlift brought more
than 125,000 Cuban refugees to U.S. shores.
While most became legal residents or citizens,
several hundred had their parole revoked
and were classified as ''excludable'' or
''inadmissible'' as a result of criminal
convictions.
o As such, ''inadmissible'' or ''excludable''
migrants were deemed ''stopped at the border''
and thus without the same due-process rights
of immigrants who entered the country legally
or illegally.
o In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
that admitted migrants could not be held
indefinitely. The government carved out
an exemption for ''excludable'' and ''inadmissible''
foreigners who continued to be held after
they finished serving sentences.
o On Wednesday, the high court struck down
that interpretation and said convicted Mariel
refugees and other ''inadmissible'' or ''excludable''
migrants cannot be held permanently.
Click
to read the court's decision
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