Ten arrested to protest Haitian community leader’s detention

Jean Murat Montrevil got caught selling cocaine when he was 19, a few years after he emigrated to the U.S. legally from Haiti.

He did 11 years in prison and, instead of being deported when he finished his sentence in 2000, he was released on supervised parole. On the last day of his parole in 2005, Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked him up and held him for six months. Haiti wasn’t taking deportees then, so ICE released him under strict supervision.

Montrevil is now a longtime community leader in New York City and active in a number of immigrant rights groups, including Families for Freedom, the New Sanctuary Movement of New York City and the Detention Watch Network. He married a U.S. citizen in 2000, is the father of four U.S. citizens, and has kept a steady job and supported his family.

On Dec. 30, Montrevil was once again detained by U.S. immigration authorities.

About 100 people came out in Manhattan for a Jan. 5 protest of his detention. Ten were arrested for blocking traffic. The Rev. Donna Schaper of Judson Memorial Church, one of those arrested, said, “I am being arrested because it is a moral outrage that our government would do this to such a great man and father.”

A statement from Michael W. Gilhooly, ICE’s Northeast communications director, was unfeelingly clear. “Jean Murat Montrevil is an aggravated felon with a significant criminal record who has a final order of removal from an immigration judge. Montrevil has exhausted all of his appeals and ICE will enforce the immigration judge’s order. One of ICE’s primary missions is to remove foreign national criminals from the United States.”

Both Rep. Nydia Velazquez and state Sen. Tom Duane are urging ICE to let Montrevil stay.