By REUVEN BLAU
Posted: 2:35 AM, May 9, 2010
An illegal immigrant with a long rap sheet got a $145,000 parting gift from New York City taxpayers before he was deported, after a federal judge ruled his civil rights had been violated when he was held too long on Rikers Island.
Federal rules allow local law enforcement to detain suspected illegal immigrants for 48 hours after their criminal cases are resolved, to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement a chance to pick them up and move them to federal facilities.
Former Brooklyn resident Cecil Harvey, 55 -- backed by an immigration-rights advocacy group -- argued that his rights were violated when he spent more than a month in a Rikers holding pen before being transferred to ICE.
Harvey was shipped to his native Barbados in October 2007; the city settled his civil suit late last year.
The landmark settlement has prompted the Correction Department to dump scores of illegal immigrants on the streets, since federal officials often fail to pick them up within the required two-day window.
Federal immigration agents have office space on Rikers Island, and the city allows them to interview roughly 4,000 inmates each year. They put a hold, or "detainer," on 3,200 of those inmates who they discover are illegals.
But ICE often fails to transfer those detainees within the required 48 hours of their criminal cases being resolved, multiple jail sources said.
"We just release them now," one high-ranking jail supervisor said. "It's ICE's problem to go find these guys."
Harvey, a 55-year-old father of three, with three prior arrests, spent 35 days on Rikers, when he should have been moved to ICE.
On Dec. 2, 2003, cops busted him in Bedford-Stuyvesant shortly after midnight for drinking a bottle of Bacardi in public. Police said they found "crack cocaine residue" in his pocket.
He pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor drug charge and the judge ordered him released on his own recognizance, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.
He was eventually delivered to ICE, but released pending an appeal of his status. After he was arrested again on a warrant for missing his court date on his drug case while in federal custody, Harvey was held on Rikers for another month before being transferred to an ICE center in Alabama.
" I cannot speak for Rikers as to why he was not released to us within 48 hours," said ICE spokesman Harold Ort. "ICE lodges a detainer on removable aliens and the jail then contacts us when the alien is ready to be picked up by ICE."
A city Law Department representative called the Harvey case an "unfortunate occurrence," but maintained it was an isolated mistake.
"The Department of Correction has tightened its procedures to prevent a reoccurrence," said Muriel Goode-Trufant, head of the city's federal litigation division.
rblau@nypost.com
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