Ending 30-Year Saga, Judge Rules Haitian Activist Targeted by ICE Should Not Face Deportation Again

A New York immigration judge on Tuesday ruled that Jean Montrevil, a Haitian immigrant and longtime activist, will no longer face deportation, after a decade of being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his activism. Montrevil was deported to Haiti in 2018 under the Trump administration but got a second chance in 2021, when Virginia Governor Ralph Northam granted him a pardon for two drug convictions from three decades earlier, which ICE had used as a pretext to deport him. Montrevil sought to regain his legal immigration status and was allowed to return to the United States on a 90-day special parole, but the threat of deportation continued to hang over his head — until Tuesday, when the decades-long saga came to a close. “It was huge for me,” says Montrevil in his first interview following the ruling. We also speak with Alina Das, part of Montrevil’s legal team and co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law, who says Black people face much harsher treatment under immigration law than others.