GALES FERRY - Pictures are all Casey Chadwick’s mother has left of her. Last June, she was stabbed to death in her Norwich apartment by a man who should’ve been deported three years earlier, according to a report released Monday by the Office of the Inspector General.
“No action. And, that, to me, is the biggest crime here is that they took no action,” said Wendy Hartling, whose daughter Casey was killed by Jean Jacques on June 15, 2015.
The report says Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tried three times to send Jacques back to his native Haiti in 2012 after he was released from prison on attempted murder charges. Haiti denied ICE’s request because Jacques had no documentation proving he is Haitian.
“His mother is living over there,” said Hartling, pointing to Jacques' family's home. “She could've gotten his identification, his birth certificate.”
According to the report, if an alien is denied repatriation by his home country, then the State Department has the right to stop issuing either immigrant or non-immigrant visas for that country. The problem here: the State Department never knew about Jacques case.
Despite guidelines that require them to do so, ICE never told the State Department of Haiti's refusal to accept Jacques. ICE officials said they didn't do so because they didn't think the State Department would encourage Haiti to accept this violent offender. They believed the State Department’s involvement was typically limited to aliens engaged in terrorism or human rights violations.
“So, they're just dropping the ball,” said Hartling, who has four children. “They don't care!”
Many aliens who commit aggravated crimes run into repatriation roadblocks.
“At this point, there are approximately 90,000 over the last four years,” said attorney Chester Fairlie, Hartling’s lawyer. In May, the Associated Press reported that 20,000 criminal immigrants were released from prison and not deported last year.
In February, two months before being convicted of Chadwick’s killing, Haiti again rejected Jacques return.
