Subramanyam Subu Vedam, an India-born Green Card holder who immigrated to the US as an infant, walked out of a Pennsylvania prison on October 3 after spending 43 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit. However, his freedom was short-lived. Moments after his release, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained him for deportation to India, a country he had left when he was nine-months old. Vedam's family has now challenged the decades-old deportation order, fighting to keep him in the US, which they say is his only home.
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The ICE cited a "legacy deportation order" from the 1980s tied to Vedam's earlier drug conviction for possessing and intending to distribute LSD, a crime he committed as a teenager. Vedam's exoneration for murder did not clear his drug conviction.
The order, long dormant while he served a life sentence in the 1980 murder case, was immediately enforced upon his release on October 3. A concurrent two-and-a-half-year life term was given to Vedam for the drug offence.
Vedam was convicted of the murder of his former r
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