Vedam’s bid for release from federal detention was denied Tuesday as he continued fighting deportation after a court overturned the Pennsylvania murder conviction that had kept him behind bars for 43 years.
Immigration Judge Tamar Wilson presided over a bail hearing in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and said she believed Vedam’s detention was mandatory because of his felony drug conviction, according to reporting. Wilson also indicated that even if detention were not automatic, authorities had raised concerns about safety.
Vedam, 64, will remain in custody while he appeals a 1999 deportation order. The Board of Immigration Appeals agreed earlier this month to hear his appeal, citing what it described as “exceptional circumstances,” according to the same reporting.
Vedam’s lawyer, Ava Benach, argued at the bail hearing that he would likely have avoided deportation and eventually become a U.S. citizen if not for the murder case. Benach said that, under immigration laws in effect at the time, Vedam would have been released from state prison on a drug charge by 1992, and that his conviction history involved a small-scale drug offense.
Benach described the drug case at Tuesday’s hearing as “delivery of LSD on a very small scale,” adding, “This is not importing tons of cocaine.” She also said Vedam was not a danger to the community, framing the criminal conduct as offenses that occurred more than 40 years earlier.
The underlying murder conviction was overturned in August by a Pennsylvania judge, who threw out Vedam’s conviction in the 1980 death of a college friend. The judge’s decision, according to the reporting, cited ballistics evidence prosecutors did not disclose during Vedam’s two trials.
After Vedam’s murder conviction was set aside, his family said they had expected to bring him home. Benach said supporters listening remotely to the bail hearing included a Centre County prosecutor and the mayor of State College, where Vedam’s late father was described as a renowned Penn State professor.
Wilson’s ruling came after the government and defense staked out competing views of how immigration law applies to Vedam’s record. Wilson said that the fact Vedam had been a “model prisoner” did not indicate he would be safe “out in the general public,” according to the reporting.
The reporting said it was not yet clear whether Wilson or another immigration judge would hear the merits of Vedam’s deportation case and that no hearings had been scheduled.
Vedam’s sister, Saraswathi Vedam, said the family would focus on the “next step in his fight for freedom.” She planned to bring him home after his state prison release on Oct. 3, only to see him taken into federal immigration custody afterward.
Vedam arrived in the United States legally from India when he was 9 months old and grew up in State College after his parents returned there, the reporting said. He is being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in central Pennsylvania, described as an 1,800-bed detention center.
The Trump administration had initially pursued what the reporting described as a quick deportation after Vedam’s conviction was overturned, moving him to detention in Louisiana last fall before two separate courts intervened.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement last year that “criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S,” according to the report.