If you have any pending criminal charges or have been convicted of a crime, you may want to consider speaking with an immigration lawyer before traveling abroad.
Although everyone is proven innocent until proven guilty, traveling while a criminal case is pending could result in being detained and re-arrested if you have an active arrest warrant or if there are serious allegations.
You should always keep up to date on your court appearances even if you are represented by an attorney because it is the defendant’s responsibility to show up in court and it does not matter if your attorney “forgot” to tell you to go to court, and it does not matter if the court did not mail you the hearing notice. You will suffer the loss of freedom and cost of getting it back due to anyone else’s mistakes.
You will want to be proactive and regularly check with the court to make sure you are up-to-date on your court dates to avoid missing court, having your bond revoked, and having warrant issued for your arrest.
For anyone who has been convicted of a crime, not all crimes will make you deportable or subject to mandatory detention, however, since there have been recent changes in the law and more changes are forthcoming, you should speak to an immigration attorney to review any criminal issues you may have had in the past.
Just because your green card has been renewed does not mean that you are not deportable. Sometimes the government can take decades to discover a conviction that makes you deportable so each time you make contact with immigration authorities such as passing through an inspection station or port of entry or even renewing your green card again, you can trigger enforcement action against you if you have been convicted of a crime that makes you deportable.
For the greatest protection against deportation, you may even want to consider naturalizing.
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