Wednesday night it finally happened. For the first time in more than a decade, Howard Bailey slept well.
For 11 years, Bailey spent the night hours fitful and frightened, remembering the 5:30？a.m. knock at the door that took everything from him — his kids, his marriage, his small trucking business, his Chesapeake home near Virginia’s Indian River.
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That knock in 2010 started the slow-motion unraveling of the life that Bailey, an immigrant who served in the U.S. Navy, had built on American soil. It began with his deportation for an old pot conviction and lasted a painful decade back in his native country, Jamaica, where he had no family and which he hadn’t seen since he was a teen.
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That nightmare ended this month, after Bailey testified before Congress, after his lawyers put in even more hours, after senators lobbied the Department of Homeland Security, and after we wrote about the horrible irony of marijuana becoming legal in Virginia while Bailey remained in exile for a very old — and pardoned — pot conviction.
An old pot arrest destroyed this veteran’s life. He’s fighting to get it back.
“Thank you, Jesus!” his family yelled at a Reagan National Airport terminal Tuesday night, as Bailey stepped off the plane and into their arms. He wore his dog tags for the occasion.
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They hugged him and cried. He looked for a McDonald’s burger — Jamaica doesn’t have them. Then, back at his mom’s house in Virginia, they all ate his favorite dishes, like his aunt’s lasagna.
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He couldn’t sleep that night, though. There was too much going on in his head. It wasn’t until the second night back home that he found some peace.
“Finally, I woke up in Virginia, in my mom’s house,” he said, on the morning after that delicious night’s sleep. “It took a long time. But I’m home.”
The last time he woke up in a Virginia home was June？10, 2010 — to that 5:30？a.m. knock that was the beginning of his deportation.
“When I answered, I saw all these guys in khaki suits and a state trooper,” Bailey said in testimony he gave to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee this summer. “I got so scared. I had no idea what was happening. It was ICE, and they told me they were taking me because of the conviction — even though it was so many years before. ICE grabbed me and didn’t care that my 11-year-old daughter came out screaming and crying.”
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That conviction — his first and only arrest — happened when he was 22, after two tours with the Navy in Operation Desert Storm. He picked up some packages a friend had sent him. The packages were full of pot and were being followed by cops who were onto his friend.
Bailey still maintains today, decades later, that he didn’t know what was in those packages.
His attorney urged him to plead guilty, accept a light sentence and avoid a trial. So he did, and learned how to cook during his year working in a prison kitchen.
The old conviction came up in 2005, when he applied for U.S. citizenship and was asked whether he ever had a criminal conviction.
“Yes, I told them,” he said. “I even went to the courthouse and got the paperwork for them because it wasn’t showing up in their searches.”
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Five years later, that honesty made him one of more than 855,000 people removed from the country during President Barack Obama’s deportation binge.
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I spoke with Bailey last month, when he was still in Jamaica, and he was despondent, watching his former world in Virginia move along without him. His marriage had ended, his children were adults in their 20s, and Virginia became the 18th state in America to legalize pot.
Behind the scenes, though, his case was moving along.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agreed to reopen his original deportation case and then agreed to dismiss it, said Nayna Gupta, associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the groups — along with the Immigrant Defense Project — helping his case.
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Then, the Board of Immigration Appeals officially dismissed the case. That meant that Bailey’s “lawful permanent resident” status got reinstated.
Biden administration to begin reviewing deported veterans’ cases
The final barrier fell when the Department of Homeland Security granted him parole so that he could physically reenter the country, Gupta said.
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“While momentous, Howard’s homecoming should not be an exception in the U.S. immigration system,” she said. “We urge the Biden administration to follow through on its promises to honor family unity and redress racial injustice by creating a centralized process based on existing laws to review the cases of all unjustly deported individuals so that others like Howard have a meaningful chance to come home.”
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Bailey said he plans to work with other veterans — there are hundreds — who have been deported the way he was, appealing to the Biden administration and advocating alongside Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).
But the return to Virginia doesn’t mean an easy return to his old life.
“To be honest, I’m still an emotional wreck at this point. I might have to go to the VA for some counseling services,” he said, referring to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “My heart is still beating so fast. I’m still in fight mode. I’ve been in fight mode for 10 years.”
Twitter: @petulad
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