Immigration officials wrong doing

[rswidan]

My brother had a green card for 31 years, 1979 issue date. Well as you see the whole family grew up in the United States, we came as little kids. My brother as a teenager got involved with the wrong crowd; he went to prison for 2 years in 1989, 20 years later he is now a boxing couch, weight lifts, and private trainer. He spends most of his time in the gym. He renewed his green card, expires 2013, and he is filing to get his citizenship. yesterday, august 24, 2010 immigration officials went to his apartment and arrested him, told his neighbor that he is going to jail for what he did 20 years ago. Also my nephew was with him at the time, a 10 year old. The immigration police, search my brothers apartment, my nephew said that they looked in all the drawers, cabinets, they search everywhere, and can they do that? And what were they looking for? The immigration officials take my nephew and my brother down town to jail, or holding cell, then they call my brother to pick his son up, get this, they tell my 10 year old nephew that if no one picks him up that they are going to put him in jail. so, my nephew is balling crying, when my brother, the father goes to pick his son up, and sees him crying and they told him that they were going to put the 10 year old in jail, my brother goes off at them, for scaring the 10 year old. Now, i want to put a letter to the administrative office to get my brother out of jail, which he did his time, and filing for citizenship.

 

[Jackolantern]

He is being detained for deportation. That 2-year prison sentence made him deportable and permanently ineligible for citizenship. He was lucky to last 20 years without being deported, and he was stupid to apply for citizenship with that on his record. You're not going to be able to get him out of jail*.

It definitely was wrong of them to harass the 10 year old, and it might have been wrong for them to search the drawers and so on. But they were right to arrest him, since he is a deportable felon.

*the main hope to get him released is to prove that he is actually a US citizen. If one or both of his parents became a US citizen before he turned 18, it is possible that he would have derived citizenship through them, depending on certain conditions. So, did one or both parents obtain citizenship before your brother turned 18? If just one parent, did they naturalize before Feb. 2001?

Another possibility is if the prison sentence is the result of him pleading guilty to the offense, but the judge and the lawyer didn't inform him of the immigration consequences of pleading guilty. That strategy has sometimes been successfully used to avoid deportation. But that is something that has to be argued in court.