The authorities reported that they were able to use Etsy as a tool in tracking down a woman accused of rioting during a protest where she allegedly torched two law enforcement vehicles.
On May 30, in alignment with many cities across the United States, it was reported that peaceful protests regarding George Floyd’s death were taking place in Philadelphia.
Late in the afternoon, it was reported that “civil unrest” began to break out in parts of the city where the protests were held.
36-year-old Jessica Godoy Ramos has been accused of posing as an immigration attorney and representing several immigrants seeking legal citizenship status, charging thousands of dollars for services she never provided. Ramos allegedly assumed the identity of a New York lawyer with a similar name and stole her bar license number allowing her to work undetected for several years.
A criminal complaint against Ramos claims her clients believed she was a legitimate lawyer until many of them showed up for appointments at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that were never scheduled. Though Ramos filed immigration petitions in some cases, it is alleged that she performed no tasks for some of the clients she billed. In addition, she allegedly issued counterfeit immigration parole documents with which a client was able to enter the U.S.
In February Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received information from the USCIS concerning five individuals represented by Ramos who tried to pick up green cards that did not exist, resulting in the decision to open an investigation.
In passing Assembly Bill 813, California has now joined 44 other states nationwide in allowing a person who has suffered a criminal conviction to challenge that conviction, even though he or she is no longer in custody.
The new statutes allows relief based on 1) a claim of actual innocence; and 2) failure to fully understand the consequences of the plea.
Although the statute applies to both citizens and non-citizens, in practice, this statute is expected to allow immigrants to seek relief for past convictions which hold devastating immigration consequences.
Until recently, the Federal Government and the State of California defined criminal “misdemeanors” differently. While the federal government defined a misdemeanor as a crime punishable by up to 364 days, California defined it as one punishable by up to 365 days. This one-day difference often proved disastrous for immigrants with convictions, however, because the Federal government considers a crime punished by 365 days a felony and felony convictions often subject immigrants to deportation or exclusion.
In 1996 Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which expanded the crimes for which legal residents can be deported to include crimes which were punished by 365 days. States which continued to defined misdemeanors as including sentences of 365 days unwittingly caused their immigrant-residents to face not only up to a year in jail, but deportation or exclusion from entry as well. This applied to all immigrants, regardless of whether a sentence was suspended or whether a person spent only a few days in jail.
Effective January 1, 2015, California Senate Bill 1310 changed the maximum misdemeanor sentence to mirror the Federal Government’s 364 days. Senate Bill 1242 then applied this change retroactively, allowing those who were sentenced before 2015 to receive the statute’s intended protection.
The Orange County Criminal Lawyer Blog