KHALIL CUMBERBATCH: Here were two young women
walking on a street.
Before they knew it, I had a gun in their face.
Give me all your stuff.
Give me your jacket.
Give me your purse.
And I had to admit to my mother that I had,
indeed, committed that robbery.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So I was born in Georgetown, Guyana.
But my mother didn't want me to grow up in Guyana.
We landed in a neighborhood that is commonly referred
to as South Jamaica, Queens.
What I did see growing up as a child
was crack vials on the floor.
I was robbed, myself, at gunpoint
when I was only 10 years old.
And it was the first time that I saw the power of a gun.
After I graduated high school, I started running
with all of these older guys.
We participated in stealing cars, we stripped cars,
we did insurance jobs.
We'd steal your car, we'd burn it.
We participated in setting people up.
We would lure the individual into the predicament
where they would be robbed.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It was four of us in a vehicle.
The windows were tinted.
We had firearms in that vehicle.
And at some point, someone made mention
of committing a robbery.
So you know, this area, 96th Street and Park
Avenue in New York City, this is a very
affluentual neighborhood.
I remember us parking, and I remember crossing the street.
And I just remember seeing these two women walking up the block.
I took out the gun that I had.
And I stuck it in their face.
And I could see that they were extremely terrified.
And I told them, give me all your stuff.
Give me your jacket.
Give me your purse.
Got their stuff.
Ran back across the street.
Jumped into the backseat of the car.
And next thing I know, we were, like,
barreling down Park Avenue 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.
And this individual's coming across Park Avenue.
And we ultimately T-boned him, and got
into a pretty serious accident where he almost lost his life.
I just remember getting out of the car and running.
And next thing you know, the police were on top of me,
all over me, handcuffing me with the sirens flaring.
And then I remember someone saying,
OK, we got what we need.
All right, let's get him in the car.
[SIRENS BLARING]
I remember that during the interrogation,
that the police officer had already known everything.
He knew my nickname.
He knew my other co-defendant's nickname.
He knew what we had done earlier on in the day.
And so it was obvious that one of my co-defendants
had given him everything.
And I remember being released very late at night,
getting on the train and riding the J
train all the way into Queens.
My mother was, of course, waiting up for me.
And I remember her asking me if I had done
what they said that I had did.
And I had to admit to my mother that I had, indeed, committed
that robbery, that I had, indeed,
stuck a gun in someone's face.
I saw major despair in her eyes.
I had essentially thrown away everything
that she had worked hard for up until that point in her life
to give me better opportunities.
I didn't go to trial.
I felt that the cards stacked against me were insurmountable.
And so ultimately, I decided to take a guilty plea.
So I was sentenced to 11 years in prison
for a robbery in the first degree.
Ultimately landed in a maximum security prison.
And it was in the cell that I really, really started
to have a level of panic.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I remember meeting and befriending
an older individual, what we would call OGs in the system.
He was the one that actually prompted
me and pushed me to get into a college program
that was available there.
And he said to me, here's an opportunity
to put some good in the world, and to potentially
help to take away some of the wrong that I've done.
And it forced me to unpack all of the [BLEEP]
that I was carrying about who I was, what I was,
and the person that I ultimately wanted to be.
Fast forward four years, I had applied for an appeal.
And my lawyer was ultimately able to get
me a lesser sentence.
When I left prison, I realized that my legacy was something
that I was not proud of.
When they said that I needed to find gainful employment,
it was important to me that that first job
be one that was doing work that I wanted to do,
which was to help people.
I landed a job as an HIV and AIDS case manager
to help people and their families who were HIV
positive to acquire services.
I had at this point successfully completed parole without
incident, had been discharged.
My wife and I had got married.
We had two young children.
I was one week away from completing my graduate degree,
and the doorbell rings.
And my wife says, it's the police.
They told me that they were there from Department
of Homeland Security, and that they were there
to arrest and detain me because of the fact
that I had a felony conviction.
Despite that felony being, from at that point,
more than a decade prior.
I had the type of felony conviction
that was at the top tier of who Homeland Security was targeting
for detention and deportation.
They brought me out of my home in handcuffs,
and they locked me into a room.
I remember having, essentially, an anxiety attack because I
knew that at that point, they had dragged
me back into the system.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I ultimately ended up spending 5 and 1/2 months
in immigration detention.
I wanted to give up many times, including the day
before I was released, when I told my wife that I just
couldn't do it anymore, and that I was going
to go into the courtroom, and I was
going to tell the government that I would get on a plane
and be sent back to my birth country of Guyana,
because I needed to find a way to get closer to my children.
It was solely because of an advocacy effort on my behalf
by my wife, all of my colleagues,
all of my co-workers, they essentially rallied and pulled
together for me and asked one question of the system,
which was how much punishment is really
enough for an individual?
Fast forward two months later, and I
had received a pardon from New York
State Governor Andrew Cuomo.
And so shortly after receiving that pardon,
I decided that I would tell my story
as someone who has survived both immigration
detention and incarceration.
I am the chief strategist at a not-for-profit organization
called New Yorkers United for Justice.
And our goal is to pass legislation that
would help to rectify the criminal justice
system as we know it.
That's what drives me to fight every day, to help to readjust
a system or systems that are damaging
people and communities, sometimes for generations.
One day, we will be questioned, what
did we do during this time?
I want to be able to say that I fought like hell
to give you a better society.
[MUSIC PLAYING]