Thomas MacMillan Photo
(UPDATED) Three days before a government-ordered flight back to his native Ecuador, Washington Colala was granted a week’s reprieve by a federal court judge — giving his legal team extra time to argue that he should be allowed to stay in the country to testify about government misconduct.
Colala (at right in photo) had been ordered to board a 7 p.m. flight to Ecuador on Monday. He would have been taking some powerful testimony with him. His lawyers say that’s why the government seeks to have him deported.
Colala is one of 32 Latino immigrants who were swept up in immigration raids in Fair Haven in 2007. Now, three years later, he’s part of a federal civil rights lawsuit, which argues that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated his constitutional rights when they came into his apartment on the morning of the raids.
In the midst of that case, ICE has moved aggressively to deport him. Just before Thanksgiving, he was given a deadline to leave the country: Monday, Dec. 6.
Colala has bought a ticket and was ready to fly from JFK to his native Ecuador on Monday night. Meanwhile, law students at Yale were scrambling to find a last-minute exception to keep him in the country.
On Friday afternoon, their efforts paid off. Judge Stefan Underhill, the federal court judge overseeing the civil rights suit, entered an order staying Colala’s deportation for a week. He did so to give Colala’s legal team time to argue that he should be allowed to remain in the country and testify in the case, said Mark Pedulla (at left in photo), a student working on the case.
Pedulla and his colleagues now have to submit a brief to that effect by Monday at noon. The government will respond by Wednesday at noon, and oral arguments will be heard in federal court in Bridgeport on Thursday, Pedulla said.
“Washington is absolutely delighted,” Pedulla said. Colala feels he’ll now have a chance to present his case, which is important not only personally but also as an example to others in similar situations, Pedulla said.
Pedulla and Colala’s other lawyers have interpreted Colala’s deportation order as a tactical move by immigration officials. “ICE officials seek to avoid liability for very serious civil rights violations,” said Pedulla.
Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for ICE, said only, “ICE does not comment on pending litigation.”
On Thursday afternoon, Colala spoke with reporters in a conference room at Yale’s law school. He was joined by Pedulla and Rebecca Scholtz, students who are working on his case.
After the 2007 raids, Yale students worked with about half of the arrested immigrants to appeal their deportation orders, but not Colala. They argued that the ICE raids had been conducted illegally and were able to overturn the deportation orders for several of their clients, including Colala’s housemate.
They did that with the help of testimony from Colala.
Colala, who’s 44, said ICE agents came into his apartment illegally in June of 2007 and arrested him without identifying themselves. His lawyers said his testimony about that incident was instrumental in a successful overturning of a deportation order against Colala’s roommate’s, by showing that the agents violated the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments.
“Immigration officers entered my house without consent … based on lies … and they arrested me,” Colala said about the raid on his apartment in 2007.
The agents had their guns out, he said. “They made me open the door. … I didn’t resist at any moment.”
It wasn’t until a half-hour later, after he had been in handcuffs for some time, that ICE agents identified themselves, he said.
“It was quite humiliating,” Colala said.
After the raids, Colala (at right in above photo) did not join the group of arrested immigrants working with Yale law school. He appealed his deportation with a different attorney, used a different argument, and failed to overturn his deportation order. That means he can now be forced to leave the country, even as he’s part of another case stemming from the raids, the civil rights lawsuit that began in October 2009.
Colala would likely share that same potentially incriminating testimony he did before when the pending civil rights case comes to trial, but from his home in province of Pastaza, he would have been unable to participate in the civil rights trial. Despite several appeals and intervention attempts by his lawyers, Colala was being forced to leave the country on Monday.
Pedulla and Scholtz are pursuing a variety of legal avenues to prevent Colala’s Monday deportation. The vice-president and president of national immigrant advocacy groups National Council of La Raza and LatinoJustice PRLDEF respectively have written letters to ICE head John Morton, asking him to prevent the deportation of Colala.
On Thursday, Colala said he was marking the time before his flight on Monday. “It’s a little bit like a time bomb,” he said in Spanish translated by Pedulla. “Each moment is a little more desperate.”
About his imminent deportation, Colala said he feels that he should be given a chance to defend his rights in federal court.
“Washington has exhausted his last appeals,” Scholtz said. “He’s just asking to stay here to end his civil rights claim.”
“Immigration [laws] in this country doesn’t understand humanity,” Colala said. Officials should look more closely at the individual situations of immigrants, he said. “It’s almost like they didn’t have family themselves.”
The ICE director has the authority to defer removal, said Muneer Ahmad, a supervising law professor. “We’ve been appealing to ICE to exercise that authority.”
Scholtz (pictured) called it “puzzling” that ICE is trying to deport Colala so “expeditiously.” “It certainly gives the impression that ICE is trying to avoid liability for its conduct in the raids.”
The fact that Colala’s testimony resulted in the overturning of his housemate’s deportation order shows that his claims are credible, Pedulla said.
Colala’s attorneys said that he has been cooperative with ICE at every step since his arrest in 2007. He’s been out on bond for three years and he even bought his own plane ticket to Ecuador when ICE ordered him to do so in November, they said.
It’s been 15 years since Colala left Ecuador, where he has a wife and three children, one of whom was born in the United States. He also has a 10-year-old daughter in New Haven, who will stay here with her mother when Colala leaves.
Colala said his family depends “100 percent” on him. He’s headed for a difficult economic situation in Ecuador, he said.
In Ecaudor, he was a primary school teacher, Colala said. “I came to this country to try to give a better opportunity to my children, like all fathers want to do.”
Here he has been working construction and sending money back to his family, Colala said. He said he plans to keep working through the weekend.
When you enter this country illegally you give up your civil rights. ...