A federal judge in Hartford dismissed the request of two Connecticut deportees who had been subpoenaed to testify in front of the General Assembly next week.
Late Friday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant ruled that Paula Milardo and Arnold Giammarco, both long time residents of Connecticut who had legally immigrated as children from Italy and who had been deported for felony convictions, would not be able to return to Connecticut to testify at Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for April 4.
The purpose of the hearing was to evaluate the effect of criminal convictions on immigrant families. Connecticut legislators had requested Milardo and Giammarco’s presence in order to “evaluate their credibility as well as acceptance of responsibility and remorse,” according to the court decision.
In the decision, Bryant stated that the court lacked the jurisdiction to grant Milardo and Giammarco the writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum (HCAT) that they had filed on March 16. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had previously denied the two parole from their deportation. Bryant ruled that the HCAT was “a clear, and tacitly admitted attempt, to effect an end-around ICE’s decision.”
Milardo and Giammarco are being represented students from Yale Law School as part of the the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic.
Claire Simonich, one of the students representing the pair, said she expects the legislative hearing to be postponed. If it is, Simonich said, “We plan to appeal.”
