October 18, 2006 @ 6:45 pm

Slick Rick Facing Deportation, Again

Alexis Jeffries

As of last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) overturned a 2003 waiver allowing the England-born rapper to remain in the United States, despite his conviction for attempted murder in 1991. right Born Richard Walters, Slick Rick, now 41, served a 5-year prison term in New York for shooting his cousin and a bystander in 1990 after an argument erupted. Under U.S. law, any foreign national that serves more than 5 years in prison for committing a felony faces automatic deportation. In June 2002, the rapper was re-arrested after his performance on a Caribbean cruise ship. The INS cited a 1997 arrest warrant on immigration violations and charged Slick Rick with voluntarily “deporting himself” and then re-entering the country illegally. Due to the violation, Slick Rick served 17 months in an INS Detention Center in Bradenton, FL. He was released in October, 2003. The case, originally tried by New York Judge Kimba Wood, has been revived and ordered back to Florida's 11th Circuit Court, which is more conservative than the 2nd Circuit of New York where the original case was tried. Since the announcement, the government has removed Slick Rick's status as a permanent resident and his right to leave the country. If the DHS proves their case, Slick Rick will be deported back to England. Slick Rick’s family and supporters have enlisted the help of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and its co-Chairmen, Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis. HSAN is sponsoring a press conference in support of Slick Rick in Manhattan. The press conference will be held on the sidewalk in front of the Worth Street entrance to the Federal Court Building on Tuesday, October 24 at 11 a.m. "With all of the real and present threats to American society from terrorism, why is the government chasing this rapper? It's an obscene misuse of scarce resources,” Dr. Ben Chavis said via press release. “The government is conducting a vendetta against Rick and we're not going to stand for it.” According to Jean Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the government is currently deporting nearly 200,000 aliens per year, "most of whom are hardly hardened criminals,” she says. “They're breadwinners whose families are U.S. citizens -- and in most cases there's nothing a judge can do to help them."