Two different US courts have stayed the deportation of an Indian-origin man who spent more than 40 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, 64, who was convicted of murdering his former roommate in 1983, was exonerated in October after new evidence surfaced in the case.
But immediately after his release from prison, he was taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who want to deport him to India.
Mr Vedam’s family says that even though he was born in India, he moved to the US when he was nine months old. He is a legal permanent resident of the US and had his citizenship application accepted before he was arrested.
He is currently being held at a short-term holding centre in Alexandria, Louisiana, that is equipped with an airstrip for deportations.
Last Thursday, an immigration judge stayed his deportation until the Board of Immigration Appeals decides whether to review his conviction in a separate drug case. The same day, his lawyers got a stay on his deportation from a US District Court in Pennsylvania.
According to the Associated Press, Mr Vedam was detained on drug charges while police investigated the death of his former roommate. He was ultimately charged with murder and later convicted of the crime.
To resolve the drug case, Mr Vedam pleaded no contest to four counts of selling LSD and a theft charge. In 1984, he was sentenced to a separate two-and-a-half to five-year sentence in the drug case, as part of a plea agreement. That sentence was to be served simultaneously with his life sentence.
When ICE arrested Mr Vedam last month, they cited a 1988 deportation order and his conviction in the drug case as their reason for detaining him.
On Wednesday, Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told the BBC Mr Vedam had been convicted of drug trafficking.
“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration law,” she said. “If you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US.”
Mr Vedam’s lawyers will now have to persuade an immigration court that the drug conviction should be outweighed by the years he wrongly spent in prison.
It could take several months before the Board of Immigration Appeals decides whether to review his case.
Ava Benach, his immigration lawyer, told AP that she found his case “truly extraordinary”.
“Forty-three years of wrongful imprisonment more than makes up for the possession with intent to distribute LSD when he was 20 years old,” she told the news agency.
Mr Vedam’s family has said his decades of good behaviour, completion of three degrees and community service while behind bars should be considered when the immigration court examines his case.
They have also stressed that Mr Vedam’s ties to India – where ICE has said they would like to deport him to – are weak at best.
“We believe deportation from the United States now, to send him to a country where he has few connections, would represent another terrible wrong done to a man who has already endured a record-setting injustice,” Ms Benach had said in an earlier statement to the BBC.
