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Julio Maldonado Deported to Peru
Submitted by davidcbennion on Tue, 10/27/2009 - 7:50am.
Julio Maldonado was deported to Peru on Thursday, October 22, 2009, after arriving in the U.S. 38 years ago at the age of 3.
He and his cousin, Denis Calderon, had been victims of an attack based on their ethnicity in 1996. Julio was wrongfully convicted of aggravated assault, incarcerated for a total of 8 years, and then deported.
His family's pleas for justice were ignored by local, state, and federal decisionmakers--except for the convicting judge, Judge Gregory Smith, who actually vacated his own verdict after an evidentiary rehearing. That decision was appealed by the District Attorney's office and overturned. A jury of Julio's peers also found him not guilty of the murder of one of his attackers. So how then was Julio locked up for so long and deported, when the convicting judge (in the aggravated assault trial) and the jury (in the murder trial) both decided he was not culpable?
When it came to wrongfully convicting, imprisoning, and deporting Julio, prosecutors and the Department of Homeland Security zealously worked to prevent a just result. When it came to acknowledging that a mistake had been made and families would be torn apart, everyone's hands were tied, from prosecutor Seth Williams to Governor Rendell (mayor of Philadelphia in 1996, now with the power to pardon an egregious error that occurred on his watch) to Thomas Decker, director of Immigration Customs and Enforcement in Philadelphia, to Janet Napolitano, head of DHS.
The case has broader significance, as Seth Williams will likely be Philadelphia's new District Attorney. He will have to decide, along with the mayor and police commissioner, whether to continue along Philadelphia's current track of close cooperation with ICE to target immigrant communities. Currently, Philly PD is routinely arresting Latin@ immigrants for minor traffic stops and turning them directly over to ICE, or actually joining ICE on home raids. This is in direct contravention of Mayor Nutter's expressed desire to make Philly an immigrant-friendly city. It is hard to be friendly when the immigrant community is terrified of the police, which is working hand in glove with the local ICE contingent to deport every last one of them.
Seth Williams didn't lift a finger to undo the damage he had done to Julio Maldonado and his family, despite repeated promises to the family. At least, we have no evidence he took any favorable action.
Will Philadelphia's elected officials side with the immigrant community, or with Lou Dobbs and others who want to see immigrants chased out of the U.S.? Right now, they are saying one thing and doing another.
Seth Williams is a total disgrace...
...and I must say that I am extremely disappointed to see that almost no one here at YPP seems troubled by this.
Thanks David, for posting this article and your one last week about this.
I am troubled by the case
I'm not in a position to comment on any decisions regarding action or inaction in this case. I volunteer for Seth's campaign helping develop policy, but I'm not speaking here for Seth or the campaign. (I would note that Seth is not yet the DA-elect, and does not have any direct or indirect authority to revisit the verdicts, so regardless of his public position, the tragedy in the case would remain.)
But I will say that on behalf of Seth, I've been meeting with immigrant advocate groups in order to thoroughly examine what problems exist in how the immigrant community interacts with the criminal justice system.
David brings up some important concerns:
We are examining these issues, as well as issues of language access, access to protective visas for witnesses, and finally how to guarantee that cases involving deportable offenses are thoroughly reviewed to ensure those charges are appropriate. I look forward to improved communication with the immigrant and immigrant advocate community under the new administration, and I hope, a solid set of best practices adopted in this area.
as to Seth's role in the case
Thank you for highlighting some of the concerns I raised in the post. I hope that these issues are carefully thought through with voters and immigrant communities in mind. On the current track, Philly risks damaging its reputation as an immigrant-friendly city and members of Philly's progressive leadership risk tarnishing their reputations as progressives.
With respect to whether Seth has legal authority to overturn the criminal verdict in 2009, he doesn't, but the family has never asked him to do what is legally impossible. Of course he and others at the DA's office had the option not to appeal Judge Smith's ruling overturning his own verdict, but the choice to push for injustice was made years ago.
All the family is asking for is a frank acknowledgment that some error happened along the way, that permanent separation from his family is not a just outcome for Julio. A public statement like that from Seth would go a long way toward persuading Governor Rendell to exercise compassion and his sense of fair play in deciding the pardon request. It could have gone a long way toward persuading the local ICE District Director to exercise his discretion and wait to deport Julio until the pardon was adjudicated.
That is what the family was asking, it was very clear from the start, and Seth made promises to the family's face that he didn't keep, that he perhaps never intended to keep. Now it is too late for DHS to get involved--they have no jurisdiction over someone not present in the U.S. Julio's deferred action application with all the evidence of support now sits useless in his file at DHS. That is why I said "Seth Williams didn't lift a finger to undo the damage he had done to Julio Maldonado and his family, despite repeated promises to the family." I will stand by that statement until I see any evidence to the contrary.
I sincerely hope that Williams doesn't view the rest of the immigrant community as expendable as he believes the families of Denis Calderon and Julio Maldonado are.
Dave Bennion
Given that Seth has posted many times in the past on YPP......
I imagine Seth has a lot on his plate at the moment - but if not now then at least after the election (assuming his victory), it does seem appropriate for him to post a comment on this particular case and larger questions of how Philly's DA office will be addressing immigration issues going forward.
Immigration issues are pretty important to the YPP community - a community that has been an active part of Seth's campaign.
It does seem appropriate for
It does seem appropriate for him to post a comment on this particular case and larger questions of how Philly's DA office will be addressing immigration issues going forward.
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