NEW YORK—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University announced today that it is urging President Biden to pardon Ravi Ragbir, a prominent community activist who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2018 and detained for deportation after criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Mr. Ragbir was one of several prominent immigrant-rights activists targeted for deportation around that time in apparent retaliation for their advocacy.

“The Trump administration’s retaliation against Mr. Ragbir was calculated to silence not only him, but also the crucial voices of other advocates directly impacted by the federal government’s immigration policies,” said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “Pardoning Mr. Ragbir would send an important message about the constitutional legitimacy of this kind of advocacy, and about the impermissibility of government retaliation against those engaged in it.”

In 2018, the Knight Institute, Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP), and the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Ragbir, arguing that the U.S. government’s retaliation against him and other immigrant-rights activists violated the First Amendment.

Mr. Ragbir’s pardon application has the support of his federal sentencing judge, the federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, and the New York Attorney General, along with many faith leaders and human rights organizations and multiple members of Congress. 

Read the Knight Institute’s amicus brief in Ragbir v. Homan here.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected]