“Relieved and hopeful”.
This is how Vancouver-based Saraswathi Vedam describes her feelings after two separate US courts halted the deportation of her brother Subramanyam Vedam who had spent over four decades in prison before his murder conviction was overturned in October.
Though Subramanyam, or “Subu”, as his family calls him, is still not out of the woods – a decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) on whether to reopen his case is awaited – Saraswathi remains optimistic.
Speaking to The Indian Express over phone, Saraswathi said, “We are relieved that two different judges have agreed that Subu’s deportation is unwarranted while his effort to re-open his immigration case is still pending. We are also hopeful that the Board of Immigration Appeals will ultimately agree that Subu’s deportation and separating him from his family and community would be compounding the injustice he not only endured for 43 years in a maximum-security prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
Subramanyam, 64, remains in custody at a short-term immigration holding center in Alexandria, Louisiana, a facility equipped with its own airstrip for deportations. Subramanyam, a legal permanent resident, was transferred there from central Pennsylvania last week, relatives told AP.
An immigration judge stayed his deportation last week pending a decision from the BIA on whether to reopen his case — a process that could take several months. His attorneys, as per the news agency AP, also obtained a stay from the US District Court in Pennsylvania the same day, though they said proceedings there may be paused in light of the immigration court’s order.
Subu came to the United States legally from India as an infant and grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, where his father was a professor and scientist at Penn State University while his mother started the town’s first library.
In 1983, Subu was convicted for the death of his classmate, 19-year-old Tom Kinser, in 1980 and spent 43 years in prison before his conviction was overturned earlier this year.
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He walked free from a state correctional facility on October 3, only to be taken immediately into immigration custody.
“I couldn’t even hug him… There was plexiglass between us. Yet, when I saw him, he stood up straight and said, ‘Akka, my name has been cleared. I’m not a prisoner anymore, I’m a detained man,’” Saraswathi had earlier told The Indian Express.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are seeking to deport Subu based on a 1988 murder conviction and a drug offence. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson on Monday told AP that the reversal of Subu’s murder conviction does not affect his earlier drug offence.
“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration law,” Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, said in an email to AP.
