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  • The Marshall Project

    I Did My 25 Years. Now I’m Fighting Another Sentence—Deportation

    I barely remember my birthplace, Jamaica, and I have no family left there. Frankly, I’m terrified.
    by Colin Absolam as told to Akiba Solomon Dec 13, 2019 6 minutes

    I was only 11 years old when I moved from my grandparents’ home in Saint Mary Parish in Jamaica to my mother’s one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, New York. I don’t remember much about where I was born, besides the country living. And yet, after serving 25 years for a murder I committed when I was 19 and earning parole, I may be deported to a place that I haven’t as much as seen in more than three decades.

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    Because my deportation is automatic due to the fact that I committed an aggravated felony, my only hope of staying in the U.S. is if the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, grants me an executive pardon. With the help of at the City University of New York School of Law, I filed a formal petition in October. Now all I can do is

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