The attorneys for Rene Lima-Marin, who was mistakenly released from prison, and then re-arrested years later after cleaning up his life, have filed paperwork to ward off deportation.
The documents were sent to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest court for an immigration case, last month. Attorney Aaron Elinoff says the paperwork requested bond and an appeal.
Lima-Marin remains in federal detention for now. The federal government wants to deport him back to Cuba, where he emigrated from with his parents as a child.
He was sentenced to 98 years in prison for robbery and kidnapping charges stemming from two break-ins in 1998. Because of a paperwork error, the prison released Lima-Marin in 2008, a mistake that prosecutors didn’t realize for years. He was then re-arrested.
In his time out of prison, Lima-Marin started a family and worked steadily. A judge decided to set him free last year. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper pardoned his crimes days later.
Immigration agents then took Lima-Marin into their custody. While a judge dismissed plans for deportation originally, the feds decided to re-work their case for deportation into a firearms offense.
Elinoff told Next he hopes to have a decision from BIA in March, but he has no real indication of when they’ll rule on the case.
