His due process rights violated, Gambian man asked for time before being deported. He got 48 hours

That was far less time than asked for by Ceesay, who has lived in the Bronx since illegally entering the U.S. in 1994.

But in finding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated Ceesay’s due process rights, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo became the most recent federal judge to weigh in with concerns over the agency’s treatment toward those targeted for deportation.

The case before Vilardo centered on what happened on Feb. 19, when the 63-year-old native of the West African country of Gambia was taken into custody and sent two days later to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia.

Ceesay checked in at the ICE offices in Manhattan that morning, like he has done regularly for 14 years, expecting to return as usual to the same Bronx apartment where he has lived for more than three decades. Instead, ICE officers detained him.

“So I come to report, they take me in,” Ceesay said during a recent court hearing in Buffalo, recalling how an officer asked him if he brought his passport.

“One guy started yelling at me, telling me, you want to go handcuffed like this?” Ceesay recalled. “He don’t even wait for me to explain why I don’t get a passport.”

Cessay doesn’t have a passport. He used another person’s passport to enter the country and then returned it.

Vilardo found that ICE violated his rights because the official who revoked his supervised release did not have the authority to do so under ICE regulations. The agency also failed to conduct an initial informal interview to give Ceesay a chance to respond to the reasons for the revocation, the judge said. And ICE also failed to provide him the “opportunity for an orderly departure,” promised to him by the agency when it put him on supervised released in 2011, Vilardo said.

“How can anyone feel safe from being swept up and put in jail or deported simply based on being targeted by the government?” Vilardo asked in his ruling last Friday. “More to the point: How can we pride ourselves on being a nation of laws if we are not willing to extend that most fundamental right to all – if we are not at least willing to ask, before we lock you up, do you have anything to say?

“The answer is simple: due process,” Vilardo wrote. “Everyone – citizen and noncitizen, the innocent and the guilty – is entitled to that sacred right. Ceesay did not get that here.”

In September 1997, the government ordered Ceesay to voluntarily deport within two months. When he did not do so, the order converted to a deportation order. In 2010, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him for three months but then released him on an order of supervision, which required him to make regular, in-person visits to the agency’s Manhattan office. The agency’s written notice informed Ceesay that once it secured travel documents, he would be required to surrender for removal but that he would be given time to prepare for an orderly departure.

Lawyers for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights nonprofit organization who appeared before Vilardo on Ceesay’s behalf did not challenge the lawfulness of his removal order. But they argued his detention was unlawful because of how – and how quickly – the government revoked his order of supervision.

While Vilardo found that Ceesay was entitled to be released, how much time out of custody he was entitled to was a trickier issue, with sparse case law to base a decision.

Ceesay’s lawyers asked for 30 days.

Vilardo’s order on Friday gave ICE 24 hours to release him from the Batavia facility. Then he instructed lawyers from both sides to reconvene Monday for an update from the government confirming it complied with his order.

The government complied, releasing Ceesay Saturday afternoon and telling him to report back on Monday morning.

For Ceesay, that meant at least 48 hours out of custody. On Saturday, Vilardo extended his release to noon Tuesday.

Ceesay returned home to his Bronx apartment at 5 a.m. Sunday.

‘Opportunity to say goodbye’

On Monday, Ceesay’s lawyers asked Vilardo to give him at least 30 days out of custody before his deportation.

Given Ceesay’s coronary artery disease and past heart attacks, preparing for an orderly departure “simply cannot occur within 48 hours,” said Sarah Gillman of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Ceesay would need to make multiple appointments with medical specialists for his “complex medical needs” before being deported, she said.

Dr. Joseph Shin, a faculty member of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said in a letter to the court that even if ICE supplies Ceesay with his regiment of medications upon his deportation, “once his medication supply runs out, it will be like a ticking time bomb until his next stroke, heart attack or other adverse cardiovascular complication.”

Ceesay was in “full and complete compliance with his order of supervision for a period of over 14 years,” said Sarah Decker, another of his lawyers from the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.

He did not deserve to be whisked away unexpectedly, was no threat to flee and should have been afforded more time to prepare for being deported, his lawyers said.

Vilardo denied the request for more time, clarifying what he meant by “orderly departure.”

“What it means is an opportunity to grab some photos, and to say goodbye and to pack some clothes and to get medicine, and to do those kinds of things which certainly could take place within 48 hours,” Vilardo said Monday.

“You’re asking me to delay his deportation, something that I don’t think I have the authority to do,” the judge said. “While I’m not exactly happy with ICE’s position here, I hesitate to do anything more than I’ve done already, because I think I’ve gone about as far as I can go,” he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Khalil said Ceesay had time to prepare for his deportation, including the time he has spent detained in Batavia. Ceesay had chances to do video chats and see visitors during his detention, Khalil told Vilardo at an April court proceeding.

On Monday, Khalil dismissed the notion that Ceesay’s medical needs should weigh in favor against deportation.

Ceesay’s lawyers argue he should not be deported to Gambia because medical care there is not as good as it is in America, Khalil told Vilardo.

Under that reasoning, “it would prevent removal of anybody except to a highly industrialized country,” Khalil said. “It would tie the hands of immigration officials.”

In an April court proceeding, Ceesay said he would die if deported.

“My life will end, because I know in Gambia we don’t have those doctors,” he said. “We don’t have the medication.”

“If you don’t follow an unlawful process to enter the country, you’re never in this situation,” Khalil said at the April hearing.

The flight to Gambia should not pose a health risk, Khalil added.

“He’s going commercial,” Khalil said. ‘He is not being deported via an ICE charter flight. He won’t be in cuffs. He’s getting on an airplane at an airport, and he’s flying like any other passenger would.”

Ceesay’s lawyers told Vilardo they believed Ceesay would be deported to Gambia once he reported to ICE on Tuesday. That did not happen.

Manhattan U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued an order Monday restraining the government from detaining Ceesay and removing him from the United States on Tuesday or Wednesday. Rakoff extended his order on Wednesday, restraining the government from further action at least through Tuesday of next week, when he has scheduled a court hearing on the matter.