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Deportation officials want to send this NYC man to Haiti — a place he’s never been
By
Matt Katz
Published Aug 18, 2023
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Courtesy Pascal “Shakoure” Charpentier
By
Matt Katz
Published Aug 18, 2023
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The federal government has spent the last three years trying to deport a Queens man to Haiti because of a crime he was convicted of 31 years ago. But Pascal “Shakoure” Charpentier has never actually been to Haiti.
Charpentier, the son of a U.S. Air Force veteran, was born on an American military base in West Germany during the Vietnam War. The family moved to Queens when Charpentier was about three months old, and assumed their baby was an American citizen.
In 1990, when he was 18, Charpentier acted as a lookout in a robbery that turned deadly. He was convicted of felony murder and spent nearly 25 years in prison until his release in 2015. Yet five years later, just after the Fourth of July weekend in 2020, federal agents showed up at Charpentier’s home, where he lives with his fiancee and her two children, and arrested him with plans to deport him.
Since then, Charpentier has been arguing that he is rightfully in this country, and produced paperwork showing that even the government at one point said he was a citizen. But the timing of his parents' naturalization — and therefore his own citizenship — is unclear, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Emilio Dabul told Gothamist last year that Charpentier is indisputably a Haitian citizen.
Charpentier's immigration status only became an issue in his late 40s, after his release from prison. Post-9/11 ID laws required him to show proof of citizenship to get a driver’s license. But since he didn’t have a passport, birth certificate, or certification of naturalization, Charpentier applied and received a green card, which listed his native country as Haiti. “That’s how I ended up in the immigration system,” he said.
Charpentier was freed from ICE detention after seven months in 2021. But he’s now awaiting a ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals in the Justice Department on whether he’s allowed to stay in a country he has lived in for 51 years. He wears an ankle monitor as he awaits a decision in his appeal.
“I believe at this stage in life — I'm going to be 52 in January — I feel like I'm constantly pressing the reset button to start over,” Charpentier said.
The government’s justification for deporting Charpentier is his criminal record. He was arrested twice in the early 1990s, when he was a teenager, most notoriously for his role as an unarmed lookout during a mugging that resulted in the fatal stabbing of a tourist on the subway. Charpentier was not accused of committing the murder and says he wasn’t even nearby; but under New York law, if someone is killed during a robbery, anyone involved in related crimes can be charged with felony murder. Charpentier and five others were convicted.
Although one of his co-defendants — who alleged police coerced a false confession — was ultimately exonerated and last year settled with the city for $18 million, Charpentier spent nearly 25 years in prison. “I did a long stretch for a homicide I did not commit, that I had no knowledge of, had no intent,” he said.
A short documentary produced by an activist and filmmaker about Charpentier’s story laid out the argument that police coerced his confession and that public anxiety at the time over high crime and political demands for law and order affected the stringent charges and sentence.
At Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Charpentier got his associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees. He performed theater and won awards for his poetry.
Pascal “Shakoure” Charpentier, his fiancée Nathalie Sicard, and daughter Anaelle.
Courtesy Pascal “Shakoure” Charpentier
After his release in 2015, Charpentier landed a part-time job at a bail bonds agency. He enrolled in a program through Baylor University, earning a certification in business administration, and he launched a start-up company doing video production work. He specializes in 3-D videos, contracting with real estate companies.
He also started a nonprofit to help at-risk youth, called From Bars II Beyond.
But five years into his freedom, Charpentier was arrested by ICE agents who were acting under an executive order signed by then-President Donald Trump to prioritize the deportation of undocumented immigrants with criminal records. He spent seven months in ICE detention at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey. ICE argued that Charpentier was a legal permanent resident, not a citizen, and lost his right to remain in the country once he was convicted of a crime.
“Those seven months were just literally grueling,” he said. “I didn't realize I had that much moisture in my body to cry as much as I did.”
In calls to Gothamist from immigration detention at the time, he described COVID-19 restrictions that meant no time outside and limited recreational activities. He tried to write poetry and a screenplay, but since he lacked materials at first he used the sharpened end of a plastic spoon as a pen, “indenting the letters and words onto the sheet of paper.”
“I found myself writing about American justice,” he said. “It's hard not to look at my particular situation and look at all of these other people who are wearing orange jumpsuits and think about how American justice and its system works or doesn't work.”
There are several documented instances of U.S. citizens being wrongfully deported. A 2018 Los Angeles Times investigation found that ICE released nearly 1,500 people in its custody after investigating claims that they were citizens. Incomplete or incorrect government records are often to blame. Children of immigrants and those born outside of the country — both categories apply to Charpentier — are most likely to be subject to ICE arrest and deportation, the newspaper found.
A Government Accountability Office probe determined that ICE deported 70 potential U.S. citizens from 2015 to 2020.
Two years ago, another man was deported to Haiti despite never having lived there.
Charpentier was ultimately released from immigration detention on bond, but he has been wearing an ankle monitor tracking his movements since. “I feel like I'm being stung twice — by draconian laws that work simply on technicalities where facts don't matter, only the literal letter of the law,” Charpentier said.
Nancy Morawetz, one of his attorneys from the NYU Immigration Rights Clinic, says Charpentier's father enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam War as an immigrant from Haiti. He was then naturalized as a U.S. citizen at boot camp, which was common for immigrant enlistees during the war. Charpentier's father was stationed in West Germany with his mother, and that’s where Charpentier was born.
“The government is basically saying that when somebody is serving in the military — whose spouse came with him to Germany — that when they have a child, that child has no nationality,” Morawetz said. “That is a very bizarre proposition for the government.”
In court papers, immigration officials argue that Charpentier has failed to provide documents proving that he derived his citizenship from his parents, as he has claimed. Charpentier’s parents were born in Haiti and are now U.S. citizens, but there’s a question over when exactly they became citizens. If they were citizens and married when Charpentier was born abroad, federal law dictates that he would be a citizen, too.
The government also cites legal precedent that someone born on an American military base is not automatically a citizen.
“I never thought I was anything other than a U.S. citizen,” Charpentier said. “There was never reason to think otherwise.”
Through several different attorneys, Charpentier has been trying for years to obtain records that the government might have about the naturalization of immigrant service members during the Vietnam War. As part of his appeal, he submitted a New York State Parole Board document from 2014 that explicitly states he was born in Germany, not Haiti, and that ICE told the board he was a naturalized citizen.
After Charpentier was detained by ICE, immigration activists rallied for his release.
“[Charpentier] only knows Dunkin' Donuts and Pizza Hut because he grew up in America, doesn't have any other place, doesn't know any other home except for this country,” said Imam Ibad Wali at an online rally in the fall of 2020. “To be deported to a country that he's not even familiar with, doesn't speak the language, this is beyond, beyond oppression.”
The dispute over Charpentier’s legal status, now documented in hundreds of pages of legal filings, is in the hands of appellate judges at the Board of Immigration Appeals. A decision to allow him to pursue legal status — or to reject his final appeal and allow him to be detained and deported — could come any time.
As judges review Charpentier's appeal, he’s trying to get a new company off the ground — though he has to wear baggy pants to business meetings to cover up his ankle monitor.
Tagged
queens
public safety
immigration
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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