One Man's Struggle Against America's Broken Immigration System

Can people change?

This question is at the heart of a fight between Homeland Security and Jean Montrevil. The answer has major implications for the reforms that lawmakers propose when they take up immigration reform after health care.

The feds charge that Montrevil is a hardened criminal alien. Montrevil claims he’s paid for past mistakes. He has a colorful rap sheet for crimes he committed 20 years ago. He’s now a community leader and the father of four American-born children, ages 2, 6, 11 and 19.

At a routine visit to Homeland Security on Dec. 30, 2009, Montrevil was arrested, pending deportation to Haiti. By New Year’s Day, a hundred gathered at his church to call for his release. U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler and other politicians rang Homeland Security round-the-clock with the same demand. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania’s York County jail, Montrevil began a hunger strike.

Four days later, awaiting the government’s response, eight clergy were arrested by NYPD in a non-violent civil disobedience. Upping the ante, they demanded reform of the federal laws that put Montrevil into deportation in the first place. More actions are being planned.

Here’s the full story.

THE PAST

Jean Montrevil came to the United States legally with a green card. He and 12 siblings arrived from Haiti in 1986, after his U.S. citizen dad sponsored them. "We came to America to make it big," Montrevil says. "Along the way, I got stupid."

He stumbled into the taxi business. A fellow cabbie opened the door to drugs. "I started selling marijuana to passengers. From there, I took off."

Montrevil didn’t get very far. In 1989, at age 20, he was arrested in New Jersey, driving down I-95. "No one told me it was a corridor," Montrevil recalls. "Police stopped black guys driving nice cars all the time, looking for people like me." Just months into selling, he was busted for cocaine.

Out on bail, he made another drug run to Virginia. A federal agent and deputy sheriff found an ounce of crack hidden in his car’s gas tank. Montrevil would’ve gotten five years under mandatory federal sentencing guidelines. But prosecuted in Virginia state court, he got 27 years. Inside, he caught an assault conviction for fighting with another inmate.

"1989 was a rough year," Montrevil says. "Prison saved my life." Released early for good behavior, he opened a store selling candles and religious supplies in Brooklyn in 2000. He believes that the 11 years he served kept him from getting killed in the underground drug trade.

HOMELAND SECURITY

Nationwide, of the 2.3 million deported from 1997 to 2007, 37 percent have criminal records. Homeland Security spokesman Mike Gilhooly explains in an email, "One of ICE’s primary missions is to remove foreign national criminals from the United States." ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is the federal government’s deportation unit.

Montrevil charges that this mission is double jeopardy. "Why do I have to keep paying for crimes I already served time for? I feel marked for life."

By chance, the feds didn’t deport Montrevil directly from prison. They got him in a sweep of New York parole offices in 2005. He’s been in deportation proceedings since then, reporting to Homeland Security offices when asked, and banking on legal appeals and political pressure to stay here. Haiti’s refusal to take U.S. deportees bought him time at different moments.

On Dec. 30, 2009, his luck ran out. He was detained during a routine check in. Haiti was taking people back, and he had no appeals left. But the holiday grab surprised his supporters. Months earlier they’d requested a meeting with the feds to discuss Montrevil’s case.