Judson campaign to bring back Haitian immigrant
ward a parallel action
to the legal proceedings
so Montrevil can
return home during
these legal actions.
Wearing a tee-shirt
emblazoned with
“1804”— the year
of the Haitian revolution,
Albert Saint
Jean with Black Alliance
for Just Immigration
spoke, “We
demand the governor
pardon Jean.”
BY TEQUILA MINSKY
“It’s been two years, two years,
since he’s been gone,” a deeply
saddened Reverend Donna
Schaper, Senior Minister at Judson Memorial
Church in the Village, said at
the launching of the campaign to Bring
Jean Home, last Thursday.
The day marked the anniversary
since Jean Montrevil was picked up at
his home in Queens and expediently deported
to Haiti. Sharing the gravity of
the times, family, friends, supporters,
immigrant rights activists and press
fi lled Judson’s main sanctuary.
Two years ago, Montrevil, a father
with a viable transportation business,
was wrenched away from his four
American-born children, two who are
school-age.
Jean Montrevil is the face of rehabilitation
and activism and also the recipient
of ICE’s retribution: ICE’s targeting
of those who speak out. This Haitianborn
immigrant began to speak against
ICE in 2005, after ICE detained him
for deportation based on a 1980s criminal
conviction that he had received as
a young man and years after he paid his
debt to society.
He and his wife joined the immigrant
rights organization Families For
Freedom in 2005, led by families facing
deportation, and two years later with
Ravi Ragbir, he co-founded the New
Sanctuary Coalition of NYC, partnering
with Judson Memorial Church.
Rev. Schaper underscored what a diffi
cult decision it was for him to become
the public face of the sanctuary movement,
knowing its tremendous risk.
The NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic,
the Judson Immigration Task Force and
Jean’s family have begun to work together
to explore legal options to bring
Jean Montrevil home.
Montrevil petitioned a federal lawsuit
to reverse his unlawful deportation.
Filed on his behalf by the NYU Clinic
lawyers (in the U.S. District Court for
the Eastern District —Brooklyn), the
lawsuit argues that Montrevil’s deportation
should be reversed because ICE
targeted him in retaliation for his activism
in violation of the First Amendment.
When Jean Montrevil was whisked
away on January 3, 2018, fi rst to Krone
Detention Facility in Miami and then
to Haiti on January 16, his children
were traumatized. Through this heart
wrenching episode in their lives, Montrevil
maintains his family ties, regularly
talking by computer and texting, particularly
with his two school age children,
now 12 and 16, who along with
their mother continue to fi ght for his
return.
At the campaign kick-off, Montrevil’s
son Jahsiah read a statement from his
father: We are not going to give up!
Montrevil supporters are looking to-
PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Jani Cauthen, Jean’s ex-wife, with their children, Jamya, 12, and Jahsiah, 16.
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Schneps Media January 23, 2020 17
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