In what the New York Times calls a rebuke to Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, two governors have pardoned nearly two dozen immigrants, some of whom face imminent deportation. In California, Governor Jerry Brown pardoned two men who were swept up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids earlier this year. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has pardoned 18 immigrants:
The pardons targeted those who had committed low-level offenses and had demonstrated significant rehabilitation since their convictions, Alphonso David, the governor’s chief counsel, said in an interview.
“New York is a state of immigrants,” Mr. David said. “And most of these individuals made mistakes decades ago, and have been contributing members to our society.”
With the new slate of pardons, Mr. Cuomo nearly tripled the number he had issued explicitly to stave off deportations, his office said. Before Wednesday, the governor had pardoned seven people for that purpose.
One of the men pardoned by Cuomo earlier this year included Carlos Cardona, a September 11 rescue worker targeted by ICE for a non-violent criminal conviction from over two decades ago. Pardons offer no guaranteed protection from deportation—while Cardona was able to stay, Liliana Cruz Mendez, convicted of driving without a license in 2013, was deported in June despite a pardon from Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe—but they could make it easier for the targeted immigrants to apply for relief.
“I think there is an increasing awareness that states will have to step in to protect immigrants,” said Alina Das, a professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law and co-director of its Immigrant Rights Clinic. “Certainly during this current administration, when immigration enforcement has been as extensive and harsh as it has been, it has really shed light on the importance of governors using their power to grant clemency.”
Among the two men pardoned in California, Brown’s office said they “have already served their time and paid their debts to society, essentially saying the two immigrants don’t need to be doubly punished by being deported.” A pardon issued by Brown in April to a veteran deported in 2002 eventually led to a “landmark legal victory,” after “an immigration judge ruled that Marine Corps veteran Marco Chavez could return to the U.S.—something that rarely happens.” Another immigrant man in New York is hoping for similar good news:
For some of those pardoned on Wednesday, the threat of deportation had loomed large for years. Alexander Shilov, 36, who came to the United States with his mother from Estonia in 1999, said he had received an order of removal in 2001. The order had followed him through several petty larceny convictions between 2000 and 2003, he said, and through his stint in rehab, his studies for his G.E.D. and his employment as a nurse.
He checked in every year with immigration officials, Mr. Shilov said, but he never felt he was a high priority for deportation. But when he reported for his annual check-in in March, the first time under the new administration, the officials questioned him more closely than usual, he said.
Mr. Shilov said he had been planning to apply for citizenship through his mother, who was naturalized in 2007, or through his fiancée, who is also a citizen. But with the petty larceny convictions on his record, he said, “it was for me a matter of ‘if’” — that is, whether or not the attorney general would grant him citizenship despite his convictions.
Now that he has been pardoned, he said, “it just becomes a matter of when.”
“It feels like a dream,” Mr. Shilov said. “I’m grateful and humble and hopeful and I’m very optimistic. I believe in good deeds.”
“While the federal government continues to target immigrants and threatens to tear families apart with deportation,” Cuomo’s office said, “these actions take a critical step toward a more just, more fair and more compassionate New York.”