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GAPIMNY has signed on to the Rutgers Human Rights Clinic’s amicus brief supporting Ravi Ragbir’s release from detention. Ravi Ragbir is executive director of New Sanctuary Coalition and an internationally known leader of the immigrant rights movement. Mr. Ragbir was detained by ICE at a regular check-in on January 11, 2018, placed under heavy guard in shackles, and was immediately rushed to a plane and flown to a cell in Miami, FL, to be deported. He was released on January 29 from immigration jail by a federal judge in New York who expressed “grave concern” over charges that ICE is misusing U.S. immigration laws to silence immigrant-rights leaders in violation of the First Amendment. Various news organizations have reported that Mr. Ragbir is among a number of immigrants’ rights leaders who have recently been detained and deported by the Trump Administration for their political activism and public speech in favor of a more just immigration policy.
The federal court order ended Mr. Ragbir’s illegal detention by ICE, but he still faces a legal fight against deportation—a battle he has been waging for more than a decade. His 2006 deportation order is based on a 2001 conviction for wire fraud — a conviction that Mr. Ragbir’s lawyers are challenging in court. A hearing on that matter is scheduled in early February in New Jersey. An appeal of the deportation order itself is pending before the U.S. Bureau of Immigration Appeals
For more information on Ravi Ragbir and for updates and actions related to his case: https://ravidefense.wordpress.
There is a rally this Saturday, February 10th, in Foley Square: https://www.facebook.