ATTORNEY GENERAL ASHCROFT REVERSES BOARD OF IMMIGRATION
DECISION THAT BLOCKED THE DEPORTATION OF WOMAN CONVICTED OF MANSLAUGHTER IN DEATH OF INFANT

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Attorney General John Ashcroft today announced that he has reversed the 1999 decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) that blocked the deportation of Melanie Beaucejour Jean, who was convicted of manslaughter in the second degree for the death of an 19-month old infant on March 30, 1995.

"The United States has always been a nation of immigrants; it is one of our greatest strengths. But aliens arriving at our shores must understand that residency in the United States is a privilege, not a right," Ashcroft wrote in the opinion. "For those aliens... who engage in violent criminal acts during their stay here, this country will not offer its embrace."

In November 1994, Melanie Beaucejour Jean, a forty-five-year-old woman, from Plaisance, Haiti, was admitted into the United States as a refugee, along with her husband and five children. Just over four months after her arrival, Ms. Jean violently shook and beat to death a nineteen-month-old toddler who was living with her in the family's apartment. In August 1995, she pled guilty in Monroe County, New York, to one count of second-degree manslaughter in connection with this offense.

According to Ms. Jean's signed confession, the child fell off a couch in the apartment and began to cry. Ms. Jean reacted by striking the toddler's buttocks two or three times with her open hand in an attempt to quiet him. When this effort proved unsuccessful, she picked the boy up by the armpits and shook him. She then hit him two or three times on the top of his head with her fist. Finally, she picked him up again and shook him until he lost consciousness. Upon observing that the child was no longer breathing and that his eyes, although open, had stopped blinking, Ms. Jean placed him on a bed just off the living room. She claimed that she did not call 911 because she was preoccupied with a long-distance telephone call and, in any event, had difficulty speaking English and thus would have been difficult to understand.

The medical examiner's report described bruises to infant's head, chest, and back; internal hemorrhages of the lungs, pancreas, and diaphragm; and acute subdural and spinal epidural hemorrhages. The report determined that the toddler died from bleeding and swelling inside his skull caused by blunt trauma, and that the death was a homicide.

Following the completion of her state sentence, Ms. Jean requested an adjustment of her status from "refugee" to "lawful permanent resident." At the request of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), an immigration judge ordered her removed from the country. Ms. Jean then appealed to the BIA, which reversed the immigration judge's decision. The BIA concluded that the likely hardship that Ms. Jean's removal would have on her family justified granting her a favorable adjustment of status.

In reversing the BIA, the Attorney General underscored that, for aliens seeking lawful permanent residency notwithstanding a prior criminal conviction, claims of family hardship must be balanced against the gravity of their criminal offense. Violent or dangerous individuals will not be granted adjustment of status except in extraordinary circumstances, such as those involving national security or foreign policy considerations, or cases in which an alien clearly demonstrates that the denial of status adjustment would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship. Depending on the seriousness of the alien's underlying criminal offense, such a showing might still be insufficient.

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