The last time Shoodley Lee Cherichel seemed destined for deportation to Haiti, a massive earthquake on the island nation put all deportations on hold. Now, a year later, Cherichel's removal to Haiti again appears imminent -- and he again may avoid deportation because of catastrophe.
A massive cholera epidemic that has stricken 200,000 Haitians and killed 4,000 may also have killed two of 27 people recently returned to Haiti after the United States resumed deportations in January. Advocates, including the ACLU and church leaders, are pressing federal officials to suspend deportations of illegal Haitian immigrants -- many of whom have criminal convictions in the United States -- until the epidemic has subsided.
"I'm not sure his deportation is actually going to take place," said Kim Hunter, a local immigration attorney who represents Cherichel, a onetime Minnesota resident who is one of about 700 Haitians convicted of crimes whom U.S. officials plan to deport this year.
Cherichel was convicted in February 2005 for causing the death of his girlfriend, Tracey Anne Mastel, when the car they were in rolled off the road and landed upside down in a pond. Cherichel spent 32 months in a Minnesota prison for that crime.
He has spent most of the past four years in local jails, awaiting -- and fighting -- deportation to Haiti. His appeal claimed that deplorable prison conditions there amounted to torture.
Last year, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Cherichel, saying that while prisons there are terrible, they do not constitute torture because there is no proof Haitian authorities intend to torture him.
But on Jan. 12, 2010, the very day that the appellate court ruled, a massive earthquake shook the island and damaged the main prison there, prompting the United States to suspend deportations.
Cherichel had been on home detention for the past year, living with his brother, when agents for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took him back into custody Dec. 10, Hunter said.