Honduras News - Daily News about Honduras

In a rare rebuke, an immigration judge has ordered agents to bring a West Palm Beach man back from Honduras after he was improperly deported nearly two months ago.

“It is extremely rare that they deport somebody by mistake,” Miami immigration attorney Robert Sheldon said. “But it is even more rare that they change their mind and bring them back.”

Sheldon’s client, Alfredo Carias Rodriguez, was deported April 9. Fugitive operations agents with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement had removed him from his West Palm Beach home at 5 a.m. in late February.

Sheldon said federal authorities should not have deported Rodriguez because immigration Judge Bertha Zuniga had ordered his case reopened four days earlier.

Zuniga said in a subsequent hearing April 20 in San Antonio, where Rodriguez was detained before boarding a flight to Honduras, that the move was a “gross violation of his rights under the law.”

After federal agents deported Rodriguez, Zuniga said: “The government must insure that [Rodriguez] is allowed back into the United States to attend all of his hearings before this court.”

Immigration law allows officers to halt a deportation order if a judge reopens a case.

“If the judge reopened the case, the [deportation] order is not a final order,” said National Association of Immigration Judges President Denise Slavin. “I would be surprised if Homeland Security does not follow the lawful order of an immigration lawyer.”

Immigration authorities spokesman Michel E. Keegan said in a statement to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that Rodriguez’s deportation was not illegal. He said officers were carrying out an order issued by a different judge in 1990.

“We are making arrangements to bring him back to the U.S.,” Keegan said. “We’re working with consular officers from the government of Honduras and our U.S. Embassy personnel to arrange for his return.”

Immigration authorities anticipate Rodriguez will be back in the United States within two weeks and be kept in custody pending further review of his case.

Rodriguez’s situation is unusual, Keegan said. Normally, lawyers representing a person about to be deported are keen to let federal authorities know they filed a motion and the decision of such a motion. Authorities were not sure why Rodriguez’s lawyer did not ensure his client was not deported, Keegan said in the statement.

Rodriguez’s attorney said his office did everything they could. They sent the notice on time and even called Homeland Security attorneys and immigration supervisors in San Antonio to make sure they received copies of the motion.

“We FedEx’d it on the 4th and they had it in their hands on the 5th of April,” Sheldon said. “They were well aware.”

Rodriguez entered the country illegally in 1986 after fleeing violence in his homeland. Immigration officials arrested him as he crossed the border but then released him in Texas, where he lived in a refugee shelter in Harlingen. He was required to appear in court, but the government repeatedly sent court notices to the wrong refugee shelter.

When Rodriguez did not appear in court in 1990, an immigration judge ordered him deported.

Then in 1994, Rodriguez applied for political asylum. He received a legal work permit but never received notice to appear in court, his wife said. He believed he had been granted asylum, his wife said.

Rodriguez is among hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who came to the United States during civil wars and guerrilla conflicts in their homelands.

Once here, many applied for protective status or political asylum and some even obtained legal work permits. But because of a massive backlog in deportations, the government only last year began notifying some applicants that they must be deported, lawyers say.

Many applicants never received notices of court hearings or notified officials of address changes, prompting federal authorities to issue deportation orders. Also, many of the conflicts that drove thousands across the border ended in the 1990s.

Sheldon said he does not know how Rodriguez was able to get a legal work permit in 1994 after he had a deportation order issued in 1990. Rodriguez later became an electrician. He eventually reunited with his high school sweetheart from Honduras, Gloria Guzman, married her and had five children. After living for a while in Miami and Jacksonville, the family settled in a modest neighborhood in West Palm Beach, where he was arrested. “He’s not a piece of cargo,” Sheldon said. “He’s a human being, and if they made a mistake, they need to bring him back.”