From WNYC:

Judge Orders the Release of Immigration Activist Ravi Ragbir

Jan 29, 2018 · by The Associated Press and Beth Fertig

A federal judge in New York City has ordered the immediate release of a prominent immigration activist, saying his detention was “unnecessarily cruel.”

Applause broke out in a packed Manhattan courtroom Monday after Judge Katherine Forrest announced that Ravi Ragbir must be released.

Ragbir, a Trinidadian citizen, was once a legal permanent resident of the United States, but lost his status after serving time for a wire fraud conviction incurred 18 years ago. Since 2006, he has been fighting a deportation order, and was detained on January 11 during a regular check-in with ICE. …

Judge Forrest read aloud a written ruling saying that Ragbir and those like him across the country ought to have “the freedom to say goodbye” when they are not a threat to flee or a danger to the community.

Hasn’t this embezzler had “the freedom to say goodbye” in the 12 years he’s been dodging deportation?

She also compared his treatment to that of “regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home, and work. And sent away.

“We are not that country; and woe be the day that we become that country under a fiction that laws allow it.”

I think the judge lady is saying that America shouldn’t have rule of law when her kind of people, such as swindler/activist Ravi, might be inconvenienced under those laws.

The government is expected to appeal the decision. It sought to stay Judge Forrest’s order that Ragbir be released immediately from detention upstate, but she declined to do so and said he must be released. …

More immediately, Gottlieb will be the guest of New York Congresswoman Nydia Velásquez at President Trump’s State of the Union Speech on Tuesday. Velásquez said Ravi will now join them on the trip to D.C.

The Democrats really want to rub America’s noses in the caliber of the foreign grifters they care more about than they care about you.

Commenter Lot adds:

Read the judge’s order here:

https://www.scribd.com/document/370271251/Ragbir-Order

She says it is cruel and unusual to detain someone before deporting them without the government first proving they are a flight risk. Ravi’s bank fraud convictions don’t count because he is a “redeemed man.”

No precedent of any sort is cited other than vague references to the the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and due process.

Since he’s going to the State of the Union, maybe Trump can invite someone who was victimized by mortgage fraudsters.

Judge Forrest wants American workers to compete with illegals, but not giant corporations.

Forrest joined the New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore right out of law school in 1990, becoming a partner in 1998 and handling an array of commercial litigation with a particular focus on antitrust…

Forrest also was profiled in the GCR “as one of the top women antitrust practitioners worldwide.”

In 2010, Forrest represented Continental Airlines and United Airlines in their merger…

In her financial disclosures, Forrest said she was worth $4.3 million and that Cravath will continue paying her $380,000 a year for the next ten years.

So she was paid $8 million+ as a lawyer to protect huge corporations from antitrust law. And then when she became a judge….

Forrest dismissed a price-fixing suit against Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Glencore. She held that, although the defendant’s actions did affect the aluminum marketplace, the plaintiffs failed to show the defendants had intended to manipulate prices

Makes sense, it is perfectly possible Goldman, Chase, etc accidentally manipulated aluminum prices.

The losers in the case against the banks that Judge Forrest dismissed were various companies that actually make things:

These included “first-level” purchasers who buy aluminum for such things as bottled beverages and cabinets, and whose contract prices incorporated the storage costs.

They also included Mag Instrument Inc, which makes flashlights, and Agfa Corp, which makes lithographic plates for the newspaper and graphics industries.