After stomaching months of physical abuse from her husband, Liyah Birru finally exploded and stood up to her abusive partner. She shot and injured him in a selfless act of defence.
That act of self-defence has rattled her world, spending four years in jail and now faces deportation from the United States to her home country of Ethiopia.
Birru, 35, came to the United States as a legal resident in 2014. She has been languishing in jail since shooting her husband, Silas D’Aloisio in the back eight months after her arrival for abusing her unabatedly.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had taken her into custody after completing her four-year sentence in state prison and began processing her for deportation.
Newsom, according to people with an understanding of his thoughts has been giving great contemplation to pardon requests from people targeted for deportation, prompted largely by the Trump administration’s widespread crackdown on immigrants, especially those with criminal records. The ICE is averaging approximately 7,000 deportations per month from the U.S. interior.
“I have petitions for many, many others that are pending or we’re considering,” Los Angeles Times reported Newsom as saying. “Good people can disagree, but I will continue to consider that and put a lot of weight on that — deportation.”
Newsom since taking office in January pardoned 14 people, off that number three were refugees in the process of being removed from the United States by federal immigration officials.
Opportunity to correct injustice
Birru’s attorney, Anoop Prasad said Newsom intervention would provide him an opportunity to correct an injustice against a woman with no other history of violence or wrongdoing, even while in prison.
Prasad argued in the pardon application that Birru felt trapped in an abusive marriage and shot her husband in desperation, seeing no other means of escape, reports Los Angeles Times.
However, Birru’s husband denied ever abusing her.
Jerry Brown, Newsom’s predecessor, issued 273 pardons in his final year in office, with at least 19 going to people who faced or feared deportation.
A pardon from the governor restores legal rights and, in most cases, eliminates the grounds for deportation for immigrants who are legal permanent residents.
Birru’s case promises to test the traditional bounds of executive clemency in California as the act of forgiveness has been almost exclusively reserved for people who have spent years proving they were fit, productive members of society after being released from prison.