Governor Cuomo, Pardon This Man

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/opinion/felony-deportation-new-york.html

Version 1 of 4.

Editor’s Note: On Jan. 29, Governor Cuomo unconditionally pardoned Mr. Abraham, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted him an emergency stay of removal.

When Shayquana Frazier was a toddler, she would visit her father, Tyrone Abraham, in a floating jail near Rikers Island. Once, after an hourlong visitation, a corrections officer led Mr. Abraham into a room to be searched for contraband. His daughter began to cry.

“She pulled away from her mother and ran back,” Mr. Abraham said. “I was getting strip-searched, and someone was like, ‘Whose child is this?’”

Just that once, staff members gave them another half-hour together. “I had to literally rock her to sleep until it was time to go,” he told me.

In recent months, Ms. Frazier, now in her 20s, has had to fight once again to keep her father within reach. On Thursday, if Gov. Andrew Cuomo does not intervene, Tyrone Abraham expects to be deported to Jamaica, a country where he has no living relatives, and that he has not visited since he was a teenager.

“My father served his time, every day of his sentence; and so did our entire family,” Ms. Frazier wrote in a petition addressed to Governor Cuomo and signed by more than 2,000 people in the last two months.

“I need my father; my aging grandmother needs her son; my mother needs her husband; my uncle needs his brother; my cousins need their uncle; and my father needs us,” she wrote.

Mr. Abraham, who is also known as Colin Absalom, moved from Jamaica to New York in 1984 when he was 11, and received permanent residency status. His single mother, now a United States citizen, raised him and his two brothers in the Bronx.

Mr. Abraham left home when he was in high school. He struggled with homelessness, slept in an abandoned car and tried to support himself and his pregnant girlfriend by dealing drugs. At 19, he shot and killed a man during a fight in the Bronx and was sentenced to 25 years to life.

Last year, after a quarter-century of incarceration, the independent New York Board of Parole deemed Mr. Abraham ready to return to society, taking into consideration his disciplinary record, professional achievements, personal growth and the severity of the crimes for which he was convicted. According to reporting by The New York Times, only 11 percent of the state’s prisoners with a serious conviction earn parole during their first interview, as Mr. Abraham did.

When his release date arrived last October, however, he was transferred into the custody of United States Immigration Control and Enforcement. Federal authorities have the power to deport him because his record includes an aggravated felony conviction.

Mr. Abraham’s case shows what happens when a state’s criminal justice system collides with federal immigration enforcement. In granting him parole in June 2019, New York decided that Mr. Abraham has changed as a person and deserves a second chance.

But in choosing to revoke his legal status and deport him, federal authorities send a different, contradictory message: Rehabilitation is irrelevant, and the United States does not give second chances to men like him.

In hundreds of thousands of felony deportation cases — especially under the Trump and Obama administrations — the latter message has won out. But it is not too late for Governor Cuomo to pardon Mr. Abraham and affirm the meaning of a second chance.

When I first met Mr. Abraham, in May 2018, he had only just begun his application for parole. I was covering a prison production of “Of Mice and Men,” and he was working as a stagehand.

He had dreadlocks, a neatly trimmed goatee and wore prison greens. I learned that his friends called him “Tai Chi,” and that he helped bring young people into the prison to talk about the impact of gun violence.

While incarcerated at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, he attained a higher level of education than many people, including myself, will achieve in a lifetime. After earning a master’s degree in 2018, he was awarded the Justice-in-Education scholarship from Columbia University, which he may never be able to use.

What I remember most about Mr. Abraham is his quiet, playful laugh. During our conversation, he told me about a puppet named George that he had made from cardboard and paper clips, with round deodorant tablets for the eyes.

The puppet had been confiscated by the prison, but for a moment, he slipped into George’s high-pitched voice as he pretended to host “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” inside Sing Sing. With a British accent, he described an “exquisite meal” in the cafeteria and “massages” for men who were searched for contraband.

“That’s kind of how I was able to not lose my mind,” he said recently. “Making humor out of some of this craziness.”

Several years ago, Mr. Abraham helped a television producer organize an interview series called “Voices From Within.” When he sat down in front of the camera himself, he voiced his remorse for taking a life. Then he spoke about his two sons, one of whom was stabbed in the presence of his brother.

“Because of a choice I made 20 years ago, I was not there to be a father to my children, and unfortunately, my children fell into the same cycle,” he said in 2014, staring directly at the camera. “My 17-year-old child, my son, lost his life.”

Last year, as the editor of a prison literature project at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, I talked to many others at risk of felony deportation. Sear Un, a Cambodian-American father who was pardoned by Gov. Jerry Brown of California, called me when he was still in ICE detention.

“This is not what America is about,” Mr. Un told me. “America is about freedom, about second chances, about the American dream, about living life without fear.”

Hoàng Vu Tran, a former refugee from Vietnam who was sentenced to 60 years for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, sent me a letter from a Texas prison. He will become eligible for parole in 2027.

“I am terrified to think that my family escaped Vietnam only for me to return there almost 50 years later, in handcuffs,” he wrote.

He remembered a time when he called home, feeling such powerful guilt and shame that he wished for his own death. His two-year-old niece picked up the phone, and he began to cry.

“Uncle, don’t cry, it’s O.K.,” she told him, over and over again.

Compared to some Democratic governors, Mr. Cuomo has wielded his pardon power cautiously. He granted just three pardons during his first three years in office; the total during his nine years in office is now in the low hundreds.

As of August, he had also granted 18 commutations, and a large number of conditional pardons to restore voting rights.

By comparison, Governor Brown pardoned a record 1,189 people in eight years in office in California. Late last year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois granted 11,000 pardons in a single day for low-level marijuana convictions.

Sixty-six of Governor Cuomo’s pardons have protected immigrants from deportation, according to the nonprofit news outlet The City. These numbers are significant, and have a powerful impact on individuals and their families.

But in the state prison system alone, more than 1,200 people are currently subject to federal deportation orders, according to public records obtained by Steve Zeidman, a CUNY law professor and an advocate for Mr. Abraham. Others face deportation proceedings well after their release. Almost all of Governor Cuomo’s pardons went to immigrants with minor convictions, often many years after they had completed their sentences, even though the majority of New York prisoners are incarcerated for violent crimes.

In 2018, after issuing pardons to seven immigrants, Governor Cuomo said in a statement, “At a time when President Trump and the federal government are waging a war on our immigrant communities, New York stands firm in our belief that our diversity is our greatest strength.”

Governor Cuomo’s clemency powers can shield immigrants who are targeted by federal immigration enforcement. But to wage an effective resistance against Mr. Trump’s war on immigrants, he must find the courage to wield his pardon power in more than occasional, uncontroversial cases.

Last weekend, during several hours on the phone, Mr. Abraham sounded weary and laughed only once — when I asked him how his puppet George was doing. For the last three months, at a private immigration jail in Buffalo, Mr. Abraham has worn a red jumpsuit that marks him as high-security. Cut off from educational opportunities and several hours by car from his family, he worried about what comes next.

“Not only do I have to adjust to being outside, but I have to adjust to being in a new country,” he told me.

On Monday, Mr. Abraham was removed from his cell before dawn. In the evening, he called his lawyer from an airport in Louisiana. He told her that immigration officers had limited his access to essential medication, and had provided him only bologna sandwiches, carrots and an apple to eat. They let him shower, but did not provide a change of clothes or underwear.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Abraham will likely be escorted onto a plane to Jamaica, in handcuffs. Governor Cuomo has the power to stop it.

Daniel A. Gross (@readwriteradio) is a writer and an editor in New York.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.