Federal appeals court reverses deportation over drug crime

A federal appeals court has reversed a District Court decision to deport a legal permanent resident of the United States for a drug crime that did not form the legal basis for deportation.

Defendant Lepido Ramirez Rodriguez, a citizen and national of the Dominican Republic, became a legal permanent resident of the United States in 1990.

In 1999, he was convicted of second-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance (cocaine), under New York law.

In 2001 an immigration judge ordered Ramirez Rodriguez deported to the Dominican Republic because of the drug offense.

Ramirez Rodriguez re-entered the United States twice without authorization.

In November 2008, after the government denied his application for permission to reapply for admission, Ramirez Rodriguez returned to the United States.

When he submitted his fingerprints to New York state as part of a job application, Ramirez Rodriguez was arrested and charged with illegal reentry.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In 2010, after he completed the sentence, the 2000 removal order was reinstated, and Ramirez Rodriguez was again deported to the Dominican Republic.

He returned to the United States again and was arrested in 2013 on a state money-laundering charge. Ramirez Rodriguez ultimately was not prosecuted for that crime, but he was charged again with illegal reentry. He pleaded guilty again and was sentenced to 45 months in prison for the illegal reentry conviction.

In 2016, after he served the sentence, the government reinstated the 2000 removal order and deported Ramirez Rodriguez again.

Ramirez Rodriguez returned to the United States in August 2022 and was arrested with more than a kilogram of cocaine.

He pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to two years in prison.

He also was charged, for a third time, with aggravated illegal reentry — the offense that led to an appeal to the Second Circuit.

“The fundamental procedural error at the 2000 hearing was that Ramirez Rodriguez was deemed removable for a crime that did not, in fact, render him removable,” Judge Barrington D. Parker wrote for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a decision released Tuesday.

Parker wrote that the District Court judge “incorrectly relied on the two later reinstatements of the removal order.”

“Because the subsequent reinstatements of the invalid 2000 removal order are not new removal orders, they do not supply a valid basis for the illegal reentry conviction that is the subject of this appeal,” Parker wrote.

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