Ok, I have a completely hypothetical question about US laws and immigration policies.
Say one is on a temporary tourist visa (or even work visa such as H1B or J1B) from some weird exotic country that does not exist. Say this country has no laws against assault, battery, manslaughter or burglary. Say you commit assault, battery, manslaughter and burglary and get caught and charged. For simplicity let us assume you plead guilty to all charges and you get your ass sentenced to 25 years with one day knocked off for every day of good behavior, or some such.
I assume you will not be sent back to your country at any point through the trial since you would not face charges there and would be free from punishment. So here you are sitting at Attica doing your time and your visa expires (assuming it wasn’t already voided by you getting fired or it didn’t expire while you were on trial). What now? Are you guilty of overstaying your visa even though you can’t leave, or does the USCIS have some sort of a special status that makes your stay in the US legal while incarcerated?
Say you serve your 25 years but meanwhile the country you were from does not exist anymore? Where do you get sent back? How, certainly you can’t be expected to automatically be able to afford a plane ticket after 25 years in prison?
I’d be pretty sure that every country has laws against all those things, though they might be defined differently, and called different names. However, that’s irrelevant to the question, which is about US law. It would only become relevant if you were accused of such a crime under US law, and were in a country where the conduct was not a crime – and that does not seem to be part of the hypothetical.
That entire part was invented to underline that were you to be sent back to your home country you would not face punishment. It is irrelevant to the question, the question is: You’re in jail, your visa expires, what now?
I think the problem would be solved, but in a different way. The US might still recognise your passport, and let you in to spend your tourist dollars, and of course during your time there, you’d be subject to US laws. The only difference between your Weirdonian tourist and one from a “normal” country is that there would be zero probability of the US ever having entered into an extradition treaty with Weirdonia, so you’d just sit in a US jail the same as an American would.
Aah, missed the entirety of the OP. Yeah, the “lack of punishment” part would be solved, but not the other. You might end up like that guy at the airport in Paris.
Actually, I’d say the US would bust its arse trying to convince the government of the new territory to accept the person back. Failing that, I suppose there might be a case for US residency (an interesting way to acquire it).
When your sentence is up, then they’d deal with it. Until then you’d simple be an inmate. Why would your visa expiring have anything to do with it? There’s no need to send you away until after you served your time.
I’d like to clear a general misconception about Visas.
A visa only grants you permission to present yourself at a port of entry. It does not grant you permission to enter, nor does it determine your length of stay.
It is entirely legal to be in the USA on an expired US Visa, provided that the visa was valid at the time of entry, and that you are not otherwise violating your “Duration of Stay” status. Conversely, a 10-year visa does not grant you permission to stay in the country for 10 years; you may get a “Duration of Stay” for as less as a few days even on a 10-year multiple entry visa.
If you would like to extend your stay in the US beyond your I-94 date or Duration of Status, you can apply for an extension. This process does not require a visa. You will however require a visa to re-enter if you leave the country for any reason at any time even if your Duration of Status is beyond your re-entry date. Usually, if you are granted an extension, you are also provided with the paperwork necessary to apply for a visa (outside of the US) for re-entry on the basis of that extension.
To answer your OP, it might be possible (a total WAG) that the judge/authorities legally extend your Duration of Status until you have served your term.
Not neccessary. You break the laws here, you do the time here. Your legal status has nothing to do with it. An incarcerated person is held until their time is served, regardless of their immigration status. And since they’re going to be deported as soon as their term is complete, there is no need to extend their status while they’re in jail. Any of the crimes cited in the OP, and more importantly the jail term, makes you excludable.
But if the crime was commited in the US, then the sentence (which may take the form of prison, expulsion from the country or both) is carried out by the US.
See, extradition happens when the country where you commited the crime asks for you in order to be able to try you. It’s not the same as being kicked out of a country where you commited a crime - sort of the opposite.
I guess I should clarify that I was aware of what actually happens from the beginning. I’m asking for the specific legal mechanism within USCIS that lets, for example, county jail or state prison trump federal deportation. It could be that the reasonable thing just happens on its own and USCIS does not try to deport you before your term is up, but were they so determined, what would be their limiting factor?
I actually haven’t looked at this issue in a while (thankfully I haven’t needed to), but it’s important to keep in mind that in this context, “indefinite” detention just means detention without a fixed end and is not the same thing as being detained forever. The Marielitos, as outlined in the linked decision, have an annual opportunity to go before a review board and plead their case. Generally it’s determined that they are still a danger to the community, and so they continue to be detained.
Actually the deportation hearings are typically held while the person is in the process of serving his/her prison sentence - that way, Homeland Security doesn’t spend its own money detaining people after they have served their criminal sentence.
I’m not sure about the specific legal mechanism that allows the state or the Feds to get their pound of flesh before USCIS, but the way I’ve always heard the logic explained is that if the person were returned to their home country to serve the criminal sentence, in many cases there is no assurance that they would actually end up serving the sentence. And if they were simply returned to their home country and released, many have strong family and community ties to the U.S., or are even long-term permanent residents, so odds are pretty good that they would be back in the U.S. shortly thereafter.
