WATERVILLE, Maine — A Waterville man who was deported last year to his native Haiti has been pardoned by Governor Janet Mills after more than a year of trying to reverse the deportation.
Lexius Saint Martin, 35, was deported to Haiti in February 2018. He was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on his way to work on Jan. 2, 2018 for violating his immigration status in 2007.
Saint Martin came to the U.S. when he was a child and lived in Waterville with his wife, Mindy, and young children.
According to his family, after high school, Saint Martin got mixed up with the wrong crowd and was arrested in 2007 for trafficking cocaine. He served seven months in jail and vowed to never get involved in illegal matters again, but he had violated his immigration status and a judge ordered his deportation.
Mindy Saint Martin was pregnant with the couple's third child when Saint Martin was deported in February 2018, and so he has yet to meet his young daughter, now a toddler. Mindy Saint Martin petitioned then-Governor Paul LePage to pardon her husband and bring him back to the U.S., but LePage denied the request.
On August 29, 2019, Governor Janet Mills pardoned Saint Martin. After Mills took office she was made aware of Saint Martin's case, and she requested that the Executive Clemency Board review the matter. After the review, Mills decided that Saint Martin deserved a pardon.
No word yet on when Lexius Saint Martin will return to Maine.
A 2010 earthquake that ravaged the island nation of Haiti and then another in 2018 were the impetus behind granting Haitian immigrants temporary protection status along with other countries, but President Trump revoked that TPS status. Saint Martin pleaded by phone last July to an Augusta board for his pardon, saying he did not have much of a life in Haiti. He said he only had power half the time, making communication with his wife and three children difficult.
