Photo credit: the Economic Times
A US green card holder who’s lived in America for 23 years was detained at a North Carolina airport upon returning from a vacation in the Bahamas.
Knewz reports that Sonny Lasquite has been placed in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Although the man, a Filipino migrant, has been living in the US legally, he has prior criminal charges involving drug distribution, for which he served time over a decade ago.
Relatives told the media that the man, who reportedly worked as a banquet server in Las Vegas, was arrested by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at North Carolina Charlotte Douglas International Airport after his trip to the Caribbean. He was then taken to Georgia’s Stewart detention centre. His arrest is due to his involvement in a 2012 narcotic case in which he admitted to distributing controlled substances.
Immigration attorney Rosanna Berandi said, cases like Lasquite’s are “not new and have been happening for decades. Under current US immigration law, lawful permanent residents – even those who have lived in the country for most of their lives – remain vulnerable to removal proceedings if they are convicted of certain drug-related offenses. This is true, regardless of how much time has passed since the conviction or how significantly they have contributed to their communities in the years afterward.”
