Man Acquitted in Terror Case Faces Deportation

David A. Martin, a University of Virginia law professor who served as general counsel at the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the late 1990s, said that "the government is perfectly within its legal rights to go ahead in two different forums even after they've lost in one." He added, "Whether it's a sound use of prosecutorial authority is a much tougher question."

Martin said being removed from one's adopted country, though it is a civil penalty, can seem little different from some of the criminal sanctions Lemorin has so far eluded.

"Obviously, for someone who's had a green card and could spend the rest of their lives here, deportation feels the same as a criminal sentence," he said.

"He's no more a Haitian than the Good Humor man," said Charles Kuck, a lawyer representing Lemorin in immigration court.

Lemorin and his six co-defendants were arrested in June 2006 in a case that Justice Department officials said demonstrated the threat of "homegrown" terrorism.

All of the men had been affiliated with a fringe religious group, the Moorish Science Temple, a sect that combines elements of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. They operated out of a ramshackle building in Liberty City, one of this city's poorest neighborhoods.

Their leader, Narseal Batiste, known as Prince Manna, proselytized on street corners, sometimes carrying a staff and wearing a white turban.

"It was on our spiritual journey that we got involved with Narseal," said Lemorin's wife, Charlene. "He was just another way of learning the Bible and the Koran. We always read interesting books."

From the immigration detention center in Georgia this month, Lyglenson Lemorin described himself as a Christian, not an Islamic fundamentalist. "I pray every night -- that's one of the main things that helps me," he said by phone. "There's a great God out there."

During the investigation, two confidential informants working with the FBI posed to Batiste that they had al-Qaeda connections.

To one of the informants, Batiste outlined a far-fetched plan to topple the Sears Tower and create a tsunami in Lake Michigan, a scheme he would later describe at trial as a way of eliciting contributions from al-Qaeda.

The primary piece of evidence against Lemorin is videotape showing one of the informants leading him and his co-defendants in an oath of allegiance to al-Qaeda. He said he was misled about what was going on.