Stay with your family or face permanent separation: A one-day difference in sentencing can be the deciding factor

“The passage of the 364-day bill will bring us in line with other states and protect community members from deportation over minor charges..."

“This bill will affect visa holders, refugees, people who are here as students, and legal, permanent residents (LPRs), meaning those who have a green card,” said Representative Leonela Felix about her 364-Day bill, H5502, which would change the maximum prison sentence for a misdemeanor offense from one year to 364 days. “I’ve been in immigration law firms, and I’ve seen the impact of having a conviction that has one year or more as a potential sentence. I’ve had clients who have committed these offenses, and perhaps they didn’t even serve a day in jail. Still, because the offense potentially carries a sentence of one year or more, they have what is called a crime involving moraI turpitude (CIMT). Now they can be deported, or, coming into the United States, they can be inadmissible.”

Representative Felix was speaking at a rally outside the Rhode Island State House on Tuesday, with around 60 people gathered in support of her bill, a version of which has already passed in the Rhode Island Senate. What it needs now is a successful vote in the House and the Signature of the Governor.

Here’s the video:

“Immigrants raised me,” said Vanessa Flores-Maldonado, Executive Director of the Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM). “I was born out of immigrants, and for over 20 years, PrYSM has organized and mobilized youth of color and Southeast Asian communities to abolish the school to prison to deportation pipeline. We do this work because we know firsthand what happens to our working-class, Black, indigenous, people of color, immigrant, and refugee communities when there is no housing, no education, no jobs, or even clean water or air. Instead of receiving the resources that we need to live, we see our neighborhoods filled with surveillance, police, and ICE ready to convict our people because we had to do what we needed to do to survive.”

Important things to know:

• This bill won’t protect serious crimes like drug, gun, or abuse-related offenses - those will still trigger deportation under federal law.

• This bill is necessary to protect both lawful Rhode Island residents and undocumented immigrants.

• Several states, including New York, Washington, and Nevada, have implemented similar changes to protect their communities.

• This bill ensures that our state’s laws do not unintentionally subject people to extreme federal immigration penalties for minor offenses.

“The passage of the 364-day bill will bring us in line with other states and protect community members from deportation over minor charges,” said Catarina Loranzo, Director of the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR). “It’s a small, overdue fix that will bring a measure of relief and stability to families who live under constant threats for too long. Still, the Attorney General opposes it, the Speaker won’t commit to it, and the House Judiciary Committee holds it for further study. Our families are not bargaining chips. We are done watching our lives get negotiated away behind closed doors.”

“Our immigrant communities are being criminalized, incarcerated, killed, and now kidnapped - disappeared one by one, but we know our silence will not save us. Hiding will not keep us safe,” said Eloi Rodas, Executive Director at Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA). “The government tries to scare our immigrant families, undocumented people, those on work visas, those seeking asylum, and green card holders into staying home, keeping their heads down and accepting the harshest, most exploitative conditions under threat of being reported, detained, and torn from their families.

“This is not accidental. We who are here today need to recognize that, even without meaning to, we can also be complicit in perpetuating this narrative that only some of us belong in this fight, that some should speak while others stay silent, that some should lead while others hide. We know this to be ineffective because even in hiding, our people are being quietly disappeared, snatched without warning, without noise, without anyone knowing until it’s too late. But history is clear. No people win liberation by waiting for someone else to fight on their behalf, and no community ever won by being silent and invisible. The truth is, it has always been undocumented workers, families, and farmers who have led the way in the struggle, whether it is in the State House or on the streets.”