ICE detains Trinidad national in the US despite having green card

(Trinidad Guardian) An on­line fundrais­er has been es­tab­lished for a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al who has found him­self de­tained by the Unit­ed States Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE) agency de­spite hav­ing le­git­i­mate doc­u­ments to re­side legal­ly in the coun­try.

On June 5, Trevor James was tak­en in­to cus­tody from his job in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na and tak­en to a de­ten­tion cen­tre in At­lanta.

 
In a so­cial me­dia post, his sis­ter Solange James said, “Trevor has al­ways been in the coun­try legal­ly un­der his F1 visa and through his LPR (Green­card). He was cur­rent­ly in the process of up­dat­ing his tem­po­rary 2-year green card and his case was be­ing han­dled by an im­mi­gra­tion at­tor­ney. We have no idea why ICE has de­tained him and he’s just ex­pect­ed to sit in de­ten­tion in­def­i­nite­ly—sim­ply for be­ing an im­mi­grant.”

She ex­plained that her broth­er was ex­pect­ed to see a judge five days af­ter he was de­tained, with the ex­pec­ta­tion that a bond for his re­lease would be forth­com­ing. It was not. The sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed af­ter James was list­ed as ab­sent for his green card hear­ing.

“It has been 6 weeks and he still has not seen a judge. Four weeks in­to his de­ten­tion, he was told that there was a measles out­break in the fa­cil­i­ty and that he would have to be placed un­der an ad­di­tion­al 30-day quar­an­tine,” she said.

She be­lieves her broth­er has been a vic­tim of re­cent im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies en­forced by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who has con­stant­ly vowed to clamp down on il­le­gal mi­grants.

Last week, Pres­i­dent Trump or­dered ICE raids meant to tar­get 2,000 il­le­gal im­mi­grants across 10 US cities. The suc­cess of the raid was said to be suc­cess­ful by the US Pres­i­dent, while De­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­men have raised their ques­tions about the ef­fect of the raid.

James be­lieves her broth­er has been caught in the mid­dle of this stand­off.

“They are not sim­ply lock­ing up ‘il­le­gals’ and ‘bor­der crossers’. My broth­er was picked up at his cor­po­rate job. Your Green­card will not save you,” she said.

The Go­FundMe ac­count was set up to help James cov­er le­gal costs, as he at­tempts to con­form to US au­thor­i­ties that he was legal­ly re­sid­ing in the coun­try.

“We have some leads on new at­tor­neys that we in­tend to se­cure who work specif­i­cal­ly with de­tainees at the Stew­art Fa­cil­i­ty and can al­so be avail­able to file mo­tions in North Car­oli­na where my broth­er nor­mal­ly re­sides,” said James on the Go­FundMe page.

As of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the page had raised US$2,728.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact his sis­ter for an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day, but up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion, we had not re­ceived feed­back.