Immigrant's guilty plea vacated in 2006 arrest

SPOKANE — The Washington State Court of Appeals, Division III, recently vacated the guilty plea of an immigrant who was facing deportation in connection with an arrest in Quincy in 2006. The court ruled that he received ineffective legal advice on the deportation consequences of his guilty plea.

Alvaro Ramos, no age or city of residence given, was charged in Grant County Superior Court with attempting to elude and second-degree driving with a suspended or revoked license on Nov. 20, 2006 in connection with an incident in Quincy on Nov. 2, 2006. A warrant was issued for Ramos’ arrest on Nov. 26, 2006 and he was taken into custody over three years later in March 2009 on the warrant.

Brett Billingsley was appointed as Ramos’ attorney by the trial court and was able to negotiate a plea deal for his client, in which Ramos pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to elude and prosecutors agreed to drop the driving with a suspended license charge. Ramos received a 30-day jail sentence and received credit for one day served, with the remaining 29 days converted to 232 hours of community service.

Ramos went ahead and performed labor on a work crew, instead of/or in addition to community service, and missed a day of work on the crew, as well as a Feb. 5, 2010 court date. Another warrant was then issued for his arrest by the court. Upon being arrested for the warrant, immigration authorities issued an immigration detainer, which stated Grant County had to transfer Ramos to federal detention after he served his time in county jail.

After he was released from jail, Ramos was sent to the Northwest Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma, where proceedings began to remove him from the United States. The immigration court ordered him to be removed from the U.S. on Dec. 13, 2011. A year later Ramos appeared before an immigration court in Seattle, which advised him he could avoid being deported if he could vacate his guilty plea.

Ramos, who has lived in the U.S. since age 11, filed an appeal, arguing he received ineffective legal assistance when Billingsley did not warn him of the immigration consequences surrounding his guilty plea.

“The immigration consequences of a conviction for attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle were clear. Immigration law considers the crime one of moral turpitude and the offender deportable,” reads the appeals court’s decision.

Ramos claimed if he had known about the deportation possibility, he would have never entered the guilty plea.

“If he (Billingsley) would have told us that this deal wouldn’t give any chances at all to stay here, then I wouldn’t have taken this deal. My wife and I would have asked him to find some other ways to solve this case so that I could still pay for this crime and also still keep my family together,” Ramos wrote in an affidavit.

Billingsley claimed he was never aware of Ramos’ immigration status.

“I remember that we conversed easily in English. I would not have had any particular reason to suspect that Mr. Ramos was not a U.S. citizen,” he wrote. “I do not have any information regarding immigration status or any other immigration-related information concerning Mr. Ramos recorded in my file.”

The appeals court judges were not convinced of Billingsley’s explanation however and ruled in favor of Ramos and vacated his guilty plea.

“Even if the law is not clear, Brett Billingsley was ineffective by failing to mention to Ramos the possibility of deportation,” the judges ruled.

Richard Byrd can be reached via email at city@columbiabasinherald.com.