Students Work to Release Legal Permanent Resident Detained by ICE for Over Two Years

Students in a government misconduct seminar helped win Richard Thompson’s release following his bond hearing.

Thanks to the work of two students in a BU Law seminar entitled Challenging Government Misconduct in the Immigration Context, one legal immigrant was reunited with his family after more than two years of detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the client, Richard Thompson, came to the United States as a legal permanent resident when he was a child. Immigration detained him in February 2012 based on a conviction that occurred when Thompson was in high school in 2001, and for which he served no jail time. Despite the fact that he had no further violations or arrests, ICE put Thompson into removal proceedings and argued that his high school conviction made him not only removable, but also subject to mandatory detention.

Thompson’s case remained unresolved for more than two years, until an important federal court decision in Gordon v. Johnson made Thompson—along with more than one hundred other Massachusetts detainees each year—eligible for an individual bond hearing.

With the help of seminar students Elizabeth Hasse (’14) and Stephanie Pimentel (’14), Thompson prepared for his bond hearing. As part of the class, Hasse and Pimentel met with Thompson in jail and drafted an affidavit for him to sign, explaining that he needed to get out of detention to spend time with his infant daughter, who was born after he was detained. They also spoke with Thompson’s family members to get additional details for his habeas corpus petition, and drafted and filed the petition in the district court.

Hasse says that she found the seminar to be an extremely rewarding experience. Students were encouraged to learn some of the primary claims and techniques for challenging government conduct that violates the rights of individuals in the civil context. “I learned things that I did not learn anywhere else in law school. Besides the habeas petition, we also learned how to write mandamus petitions and suppression briefs,” says Hasse. While Hasse and Pimentel learned these skills in the context of immigration law, the seminar aimed to give them tools that could be used in other areas as well.

Eleven of Thompson’s family members attended his July hearing, and pooled together all of their savings to meet the $6,000 bond set by the immigration judge. “I was extremely happy when the judge granted Richard’s bond,” says Hasse. “There is absolutely no reason to lock this man up while he waits for a decision from the judge. He is not a flight risk, nor a danger to society. He deserves his liberty.”

Hasse and Pimentel enjoyed working with their client. “He is a very sweet man who made a mistake a long time ago, and has since rebuilt his life, but continues to be punished by our immigration system,” says Hasse. “He is the type of client any immigration attorney would hope for. He was incredibly grateful, very easy to work with, and very sympathetic.”

Since graduating in May, Hasse is continuing to advocate for detained immigrants. She is an Equal Justice Works fellow at Tahirih Justice Center in Houston, Texas, where she works with detained female immigrants and unaccompanied minors who have been released from detention.

Pimentel is an Associate Immigration Attorney at Fragomen Worldwide, a leading immigration service provider, specializing in Business Immigration, with a client base consisting largely of businesses seeking to retain talented foreign workers and transferring employees of their entities abroad to the United States. Fragomen also does family-based immigration work, and is currently working on a number of pro bono matters, mostly related to securing immigration status for victims of domestic violence.

“Working with Richard was one of my most valuable law school experiences,” says Pimentel. “It taught me a lot, not only about the habeas process, but also about the politics of removing people who are ‘felons.’ It served to change my point of view on the administration’s removal of many individuals categorized as felons and showed me that there is much more than meets the eye on these issues.”

Reported by Sara Womble (CFA ’14)