Clinical Clients Subpoenaed to Give Testimony on Impact of Deportation
On February 26, 2016, a State Marshal served a legislative subpoena on an attorney for two longtime Connecticut residents who were deported by the federal government in 2011 and 2012. The subpoenas, signed by Rep. William Tong and Sen. Eric Coleman, Co-Chairpersons of the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly, request in-person testimony about the impact of Connecticut criminal convictions on immigrant households affected by deportation or the threat of deportation. The Committee has scheduled an informational hearing for April 4, 2016.
The legislative subpoenas call for the testimony of Mrs. Paula Milardo and Mr. Arnold Giammarco, each of whom lived lawfully in Connecticut for approximately 50 years before they were deported by the federal government based on nonviolent criminal convictions.
Milardo and Giammarco are represented by law students and their supervising attorneys in the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, Veterans Legal Services Clinic, and Criminal Justice Clinic at Yale Law School.
“A state legislature cannot reverse a federal deportation order, but it has the responsibility to investigate the operation of state laws in the lives of the people it represents,” said Katherine Haas '17, a law student intern representing Milardo. “A committee acts wisely and effectively when it has direct testimony from those most impacted by the law.”
“In subpoenaing Connecticut residents who were deported by the federal government based on convictions under state law, the Judiciary Committee is innovatively carrying out its duties to its residents,” said Claire Simonich ’16, a law student intern representing Giammarco. “As far as we know, this is the first time that a state legislature has issued a subpoena for the testimony of a deported resident.”
Paula Milardo moved legally to the United States from Italy with her parents in 1961, when she was 11 years old. She was a lawful permanent resident who grew up in Middletown, Connecticut. In 1970, she married Anthony Milardo, a disabled U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War. In Middletown, the Milardos raised three children, and are now grandparents to six grandchildren, all of whom reside in the state.
In 2010, Milardo pled guilty to larceny in the first degree in a Connecticut state court. The offense was her first and only, and it stemmed from a gambling addiction she developed while Milardo battled stage III cancer. Milardo apologized and accepted responsibility for her offense. She paid back the money she stole, completed treatment for her gambling addiction, and served her prison sentence, just as Connecticut Judge Patrick J. Clifford had ordered. After Milardo served her sentence, however, the federal government intervened and punished her a second time: it arrested, detained, and deported her to Italy. Milardo’s defense attorney had never told her that her guilty plea in Connecticut court would result in deportation. Since 2011, Milardo has lived in exile from her husband, three children, six grandchildren, and Middletown, her home of 50 years.
Arnold Giammarco moved legally to the United States from Italy with his parents in 1960, when he was 4 years old. He was a lawful permanent resident and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. Giammarco enlisted in the U.S. Army as a teenager, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, an Italian immigrant who had fought for the U.S. in World War I. After his honorable discharge in 1979, Giammarco joined the Connecticut Army National Guard. He applied for U.S. citizenship in 1982, but the federal government never finished processing his application. After Giammarco’s first marriage ended, he fell into a period of drug addiction, and received a number of low-level larceny and drug possession charges. In the 2000s, Giammarco ended his habit, remarried, had a daughter, and worked to support his family. The Connecticut States’ Attorneys who prosecuted Giammarco during his period of addiction have reviewed the cases and concluded that they do not oppose a full pardon for him.
Nevertheless, in 2011, federal immigration agents arrested Giammarco at his home, placed him in removal proceedings based on years-old minor offenses, and detained him for 18 months without bond. Despite Mr. Giammarco’s still-pending citizenship application, the government deported him to Italy in 2012. In 2013, Mr. Giammarco filed a federal lawsuit to compel the government to decide his 1982 citizenship application. That lawsuit is pending. In it the federal government continues to defend its actions and justify Mr. Giammarco’s banishment.
