(RNS) — Immigration rights activist Ravi Ragbir, who had been under a deportation order since his release from prison for fraud in 2006, received a pardon from President Joseph Biden in a last-minute flurry of pardons issued Sunday (Jan. 19).
“I am so grateful to President Biden for this pardon, which has lifted a burden that I have carried for so many years,” said Ragbir in a statement. “The uncertainty and instability of not knowing what tomorrow would bring has kept me and my family awake for many nights, and we can now breathe,” he said.
Ragbir, a well-known immigration rights activist in New York City, had filed a pardon application in 2016, hoping to be spared deportation triggered by his criminal record. A chorus of nationally known faith leaders and other clergy in the New York area had supported his plea to be allowed to stay. Since 2007, he has served as the director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, a group founded in partnership with Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village that accompanies immigrants to their check-ins with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Ragbir was himself arrested in 2018 at an ICE check-in and designated for deportation, but a federal judge, calling Ragbir a “redeemed man,” o …