An immigration judge on Thursday ruled against the deportation of a Pennsylvania man who had spent 43 years in prison and was set to be freed after his murder conviction was overturned, only to be picked up by immigration agents immediately after.
Subramanyam Vedam, 64, was a green card holder who came to the United States with his parents from India when he was 9 months old. He was exonerated in October, after a judge vacated his murder conviction based on ballistics evidence that prosecutors had failed to disclose during his trials.
The day after the charges were dropped, Mr. Vedam was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. At the time, the agency cited a 1999 deportation order tied to a felony drug conviction and described Mr. Vedam as a career criminal. He has been held at a facility in central Pennsylvania for the past six months.
On Thursday, Judge Adam G. Panopoulos ruled that Mr. Vedam could remain in the United States, finding that he was a “person of good moral character” and that he did not pose a threat. The judge pointed to Mr. Vedam’s efforts to create a literacy program while in prison and his close ties to family members in the United States.
“The court finds that the stain of the respondents’ bad acts from the early 1980s over time have slowly dissipated to a point where the respondent has taken on a new identity, a new life and became a new person,” Judge Panopoulos said at a hearing.
The decision is a blow to the Trump administration, which has aggressively ramped up arrests in an effort to carry out the president’s campaign promise of mass deportations. In justifying its immigration crackdown, the administration has repeatedly said that it is driving out “criminal illegal aliens” who pose a threat to public safety. ICE did not directly respond to questions about whether it planned to appeal the decision.
“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration law,” the Homeland Security Department said in a statement after the ruling.
While living in State College, Pa., Mr. Vedam was arrested in 1982 and accused of murdering his friend Thomas Kinser, who was found dead with a gunshot wound to the skull. After a judge vacated Mr. Vedam’s murder conviction in October, the Centre County District Attorney’s Office declined to seek a retrial.
In the 1980s, Mr. Vedam also pleaded no contest and was convicted of possessing LSD with the intent to distribute it. Ava Benach, his immigration lawyer, said on Thursday that the distribution was on a “small scale.”
“I was young and stupid,” Mr. Vedam said at a hearing on Wednesday. “It was common usage back in the ’70s and early ’80s, but I certainly would not make those choices today.”
Mr. Vedam’s case was also rare because he was eligible for a limited form of relief from deportation available only to certain green card holders who enter plea deals to crimes before April 1997.
“It’s this niche form of relief that’s available for very few people,” said Kerry E. Doyle, a partner at Green and Spiegel who was the top ICE lawyer during the Biden administration.
Mr. Vedam’s family members celebrated the ruling on Thursday.
“We’re profoundly grateful to Judge Panopoulos not only for affording Subu the justice he had been deprived over so many decades, but also for seeing him as the honorable, compassionate, conscientious man he has always been,” Saraswathi Vedam, his sister, said in a statement.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Madeleine Ngo covers immigration and economic policy for The Times.
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