YLS Clinical Students Seek to Reunite Family Following Deportation

On May 20, 2015, students from the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at the Yale Law School filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in an attempt to return a Connecticut woman back to her home following her deportation to Sicily.

Paula Milardo of Middletown, CT, has been living in Sicily since her deportation in 2011. She has been separated from her husband, children, and grandchildren for over three years.

Milardo immigrated to the United States as a child and raised a family in Connecticut with her husband Tony Milardo, a Vietnam veteran. Late in her life, Milardo developed a gambling addiction and stole money from a friend, according to the clinic. In 2010, she pled guilty to larceny, served five months in prison, and paid all the money back. But her attorney failed to tell her that by pleading guilty she would also face a more severe punishment—banishment from the United States, her home for over 50 years.

“I made a mistake and I am truly sorry for what I did,” said Milardo. “But I have paid my debt to society. I never thought I would be torn from my family after living in Connecticut nearly all my life. I am devastated and heartbroken without my husband, children, and grandchildren. My life is back home in Connecticut.”

“This separation has been a nightmare for our family,” said Tony Milardo. “I love the country I served, but I still cannot believe this is happening to us. All I want is to be reunited my wife who I love. I will fight to bring her home.”

Milardo’s habeas corpus petition argues that her attorney’s failure to warn her that her guilty plea would lead to her deportation violated her constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel.

“The Supreme Court held in Padilla v. Kentucky (2010) that attorneys have an affirmative duty to warn their clients of the immigration consequences of their guilty pleas. Mrs. Milardo received no such warning. We want to make sure that she isn’t punished for her attorney’s mistake,” explained Andrea Levien ’17, a Yale Law School student working on the case.

Levien said the 65-year-old grandmother and her family will keep fighting until they are reunited back at her home in Middletown.

The Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization (LSO) provides legal representation to individuals and organizations in need of legal services but unable to afford private attorneys. Students, supervised by Law School faculty members and participating attorneys, interview clients, write briefs, prepare witnesses, try cases, negotiate settlements, draft documents, participate in commercial transactions, draft legislation and regulatory proposals, and argue appeals in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Connecticut Supreme Court.