A Canadian student studying at Cornell could be facing deportation for a racist attack on a black man last year that sent the victim to the hospital, reports the Cornell Sun.
Last September, Ithaca police charged John P. A. Greenwood -- then 19 -- with third-degree assault and second-degree aggravated harassment after he sucker-punched fellow student Solomon Shewit after calling him the N-word in a late night altercation outside the dorms.
According to the police report, Shewit walked up to a group of white students who were arguing and was set upon by the group, with Greenwood delivering a blow that dropped the black student to the ground and necessitated treatment for a possible concussion.
“They said ‘F*ck you, n*gger,’ over and over, as they were leaving,” Shewit explained at the time. “Four or five of the guys came up and started punching me in the face repeatedly. I was pretty bloodied up.”
According to another student, he was also harassed by the group that same evening.
“You might be a sand-n*gger black, but you’re not black” one man says in a video that went viral, before adding, “Come fight us, n*gger.”
According to the Sun, Greenwood is currently not attending the school and, if prosecutors have their way he could face deportation back to Canada where he grew up.
The report notes that a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act states that immigrants convicted of a “crime of moral turpitude” are deportable if they were admitted to the U.S. within five years before the crime and the charge carries a sentence of at least one year.
Greenwood who was booted from the Cornell squash team after the fight, is now fighting being sent back, with his attorney filing a motion saying deportation is unduly "harsh" in light of his crime.
“He would thus be exiled from the United States, an extraordinarily harsh consequence, preventing him from, among other things, ever pursuing an education at a college or University in the United States,” Greenwood attorney Ronald P. Fischetti wrote in his brief asking that all charges be dropped.
Greenwood “not only forfeiting his right to a Cornell degree,” Fischetti continued “but branding him as someone that has been expelled, and greatly limiting his chances of enrolling in another quality academic institution.”
The attorney went on to lament,"A four-year degree from Cornell was a lifelong dream for Mr. Greenwood. A conviction here would erase that opportunity.”
