a1866: Haitian Deportation (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By TED BRIDIS

   WASHINGTON, May 8  (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday
he has ordered the deportation of a Haitian mother who pleaded guilty to
fatally beating a relative's 19-month-old son while she was baby-sitting in
1995.
   Melanie Beaucejour Jean, 45, of Plaisance, Haiti, was taken into custody
by the Immigration and Naturalization Service this week for deportation
proceedings. Ashcroft's decision reverses a 1999 ruling by the Board of
Immigration Appeals that let Jean remain in the United States because her
removal would cause hardships for her husband and five children.
   "Aliens arriving at our shores must understand that residency in the
United States is a privilege, not a right," Ashcroft wrote, in an unusually
blunt 16-page criticism of the decision by the immigration appeals board.
"For those aliens ... who engage in violent criminal acts during their stay
here, this country will not offer its embrace."
   Jean pleaded guilty in 1995 to second-degree manslaughter in Monroe
County, N.Y. Just over four months after her arrival from Haiti, she was
accused in the death of a 19-month-old boy whose mother was her husband's
sister-in-law. The families were sharing an apartment in Rochester.
   Authorities said that, while she baby-sat the child on March 30, 1995,
he fell off a couch and cried. She spanked him several times, picked him up
by the armpits and shook him, then punched him on the top of his head,
police said.
   Jean told authorities she placed him on a bed near the living room but
did not call 911 even though she noticed the boy's eyes were open and not
blinking. When Jean's husband and the boy's mother returned an hour later,
Jean told them the boy passed out, police said. A coroner's report
determined the toddler died from bleeding and swelling inside his skull.
   Jean later told a judge she did not call for help because she thought
the boy was sleeping and because she did not speak English well. The judge
sentenced her to two to six years in prison.
   After Jean served her prison term, she sought to change her immigration
status from "refugee" to "lawful permanent resident." Although an
immigration judge denied the request, the Board of Immigration Appeals
sided with Jean by deciding that manslaughter did not represent a "crime of
violence" and did not suggest she would use violence to commit crimes.
   Ashcroft criticized the appeals board's decision as "grossly deficient"
and "difficult to accept." Ashcroft's order was dated May 2 but announced
Wednesday.
   "The opinion marginalizes the depravity of her criminal offense,"
Ashcroft wrote. "Little or no significance appears to have been attached to
the fact that the respondent confessed to beating and shaking a
19-month-old child to death."
   Ashcroft acknowledged that deporting Jean "will undoubtedly impose a
strain on her family," which he said exhibited "admirable strength and
resiliency" during Jean's years in prison. But immigration law cannot focus
solely on family hardships, the attorney general wrote.
   "Balance will nearly always require the denial of a request ... where an
alien's criminal conduct is as serious as that of the respondent," he
wrote.
   Ashcroft also dismissed Jean's argument that she would be persecuted in
Haiti by members of the former army and private death squads organized
under the former Duvalier dictatorship.
   The attorney general noted that Jean's husband testified he was beaten
and almost killed in the early 1990s for his work with the political party
headed by then-opposition leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and soldiers
burned the family's home and killed other family members including her
husband's father and two cousins.
   But Ashcroft said the attacks had been against Jean's husband, and he
said the political situation is substantially calmer in Haiti. Aristide is
now the president.