JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

President Biden grants clemency to 2 Caribbean nationals

by

38 days ago
20250120

On his fi­nal day in of­fice, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden grant­ed clemen­cy to two Caribbean na­tion­als, Mar­cus Gar­vey, a Ja­maican-born civ­il rights leader, and Ravi Rag­bir, an im­mi­gra­tion ac­tivist from T&T. They were in­clud­ed in a list of five in­di­vid­u­als par­doned and two who re­ceived sen­tence com­mu­ta­tions, as part of Biden’s use of clemen­cy pow­ers to recog­nise “re­morse, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, and re­demp­tion.”

Gar­vey, a Ja­maican-born civ­il rights leader, is best known for his lead­er­ship in the Black Na­tion­al­ism and Pan-African­ism move­ments. He was con­vict­ed of mail fraud in 1923 and sen­tenced to five years in prison for his in­volve­ment with the Black Star Line, the first black-owned ship­ping com­pa­ny.

In 1927, Pres­i­dent Calvin Coolidge com­mut­ed Gar­vey’s sen­tence, but the con­vic­tion re­mained. Gar­vey was de­port­ed to Ja­maica and died in Lon­don in 1940.

Gar­vey’s lega­cy as a glob­al ad­vo­cate for African his­to­ry and cul­ture lives on. He found­ed the Uni­ver­sal Ne­gro Im­prove­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (UNIA), which cel­e­brat­ed African iden­ti­ty and fos­tered pride in African her­itage. He was de­scribed by Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr as “the first man of colour in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States to lead and de­vel­op a mass move­ment.”

In a re­sponse, Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness said the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered it “a first step in the to­tal ex­on­er­a­tion, ab­so­lu­tion and ex­punge­ment of a his­tor­i­cal wrong done to one of the most sig­nif­i­cant civ­il rights leader and Pan African­ist.”

“I want to thank Pres­i­dent Biden for his con­sid­er­a­tion in this mat­ter. It has been a long and per­sis­tent strug­gle and I would al­so like to thank the Gar­vey fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly Julius and the UNIA, all the pri­vate cit­i­zens who signed var­i­ous pe­ti­tions, friends of Ja­maica and the Ja­maican di­as­po­ra who lob­bied the US Gov­ern­ment, and in­deed suc­ces­sive Gov­ern­ments of Ja­maica who have been con­sis­tent in of­fi­cial­ly re­quest­ing this con­sid­er­a­tion from the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States,” Hol­ness said in a state­ment

Rag­bir, an im­mi­gra­tion ac­tivist, im­mi­grat­ed to the US in 1991 and be­came a law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dent in 1994 but faced de­por­ta­tion af­ter a mort­gage fraud con­vic­tion in 2006. De­spite a de­por­ta­tion or­der, Rag­bir be­came a promi­nent ad­vo­cate for im­mi­grant rights, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the New Sanc­tu­ary Coali­tion, an in­ter­faith net­work that sup­ports vul­ner­a­ble im­mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties.

Rag­bir was vo­cal in his crit­i­cism of the US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE), es­pe­cial­ly af­ter his 2018 ar­rest by ICE dur­ing a rou­tine check-in, which he ar­gued was a re­tal­ia­to­ry act due to his ac­tivism. A court rul­ing led to a three-year stay of his de­por­ta­tion or­der.

“Rag­bir has re­ceived nu­mer­ous awards for his ef­forts to pro­mote jus­tice and hu­man dig­ni­ty,” the White House state­ment said.

The White House state­ment al­so said that Biden’s use of clemen­cy pow­er re­flects his be­lief that Amer­i­ca is “a coun­try built on the promise of sec­ond chances.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored