Resource: Activist Entitled to ‘Freedom to Say Goodbye,’ Judge Rules

In an impassioned rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration practices, a Federal District Court judge in Manhattan Monday ordered the immediate release of the immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir, calling his abrupt detention on Jan. 11 unconstitutional and cruel.

Mr. Ragbir, a native of Trinidad and Tobago who has been ordered to leave the country by immigration officials, should have been entitled to “the freedom to say goodbye,” as Judge Katherine B. Forrest, of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York, put it in her opinion.