Six Murder Witnesses Locked In Jail To Protect Them From Deportation. Until After They Testify.

Six witnesses have been shuffled from jail to jail over the past seven months because their undocumented status might lead them to be deported before they can testify in the case of their murdered co-worker:

Because they were illegal immigrants as well as material witnesses to the April 29 crime, the men were immediately taken into custody and have remained in jail for the past seven months: first in St. Tammany, then in federal custody, then back to the north shore. For the first six months, they didn’t have an attorney.

Sounds like they’re in some sort of perilous limbo. To coin a phrase:

They’re stuck in a perilous limbo, in the fissure between state and federal government — trapped between prosecutors, who need them to testify at the trial of four suspects, and immigration officials, who would deport them if they were released.

Local and national attorneys, government officials and immigration rights advocates say they have never heard of a case quite like it.

Now, see, had these six men been German, they would still have been locked in a cage, but at least they would have had all the raw beef patties and chicken chewies their little brown hearts could desire.

Six Hispanic men witnessed a murder. Now they’re in jail. Why? St. Tammany officials fear they’ll be deported and won’t be able to testify [The Times-Picayune]