IMMIGRANT IN PRISON WINS RIGHT TO HEARING

HARTFORD, June 29 - Enrico St. Cyr was lying in his prison cell
Tuesday evening, thinking about nothing at all, when the Roman
Catholic priest who often led him and other detained Haitian
immigrants in prayer stopped to offer congratulations.

"Congratulations for what?" Mr. St. Cyr asked the priest. "He said,
`You won your case.'"

The news stunned Mr. St. Cyr, 34, who legally immigrated to
Connecticut when he was 19. "Thank God!" he recalled saying. He could
hardly believe it.

After years resisting the Immigration and Naturalization Service's
efforts to deport him, Mr. St. Cyr, a confessed former cocaine user,
had won his case before the United States Supreme Court.

In a 5-to-4 ruling that affects thousands of legal immigrants like
Mr. St. Cyr who have been convicted of serious crimes in this
country, the court ruled on Tuesday that the I.N.S., which had kept
Mr. St. Cyr behind bars since his release from state prison in May
1999, could not automatically deport him, as the Bush and Clinton
administrations had claimed. The court said that he and other
immigrants who were convicted of serious felonies before April 1,
1997, when strict new immigration laws took effect, must be given a
chance to appeal a deportation decision before an I.N.S. judge. Often
those hearings result in an immigrant's release.

Tuesday's ruling, however, does not free Mr. St. Cyr, who has
permanent resident status in this country. It merely forces the
immigration agency to provide what is known as a "212c," a hearing in
which a noncitizen may demonstrate his rehabilitation and suitability
to re-enter American society, before the agency's Board of
Immigration in Falls Church, Va. There is no set time frame the I.N.S
must follow.

Mr. St. Cyr's hearing will probably not happen for nine months or so,
said Michael G. Moore, a lawyer from Springfield, Mass., who argued
his case. Though about half of these hearings result in rulings
favorable to the petitioners, Mr. Moore said that because his client
was already in prison, "this is not a slam dunk."

Still, it was a major reversal of fortune for Mr. St. Cyr, who said
he wanted only to return to Bridgeport, where his mother and sister
live, as a law-abiding, hard-working man freed, after six years in
custody, from his small prison cell, his cocaine addiction and his
thuggish disposition.

In an hourlong interview from a small holding cell at the I.N.S.
office here, Mr. St. Cyr, dressed in a ragged white T-shirt, khaki
trousers and black Nike basketball shoes, described his life since he
pleaded guilty in August 1995 to selling about $100 worth of cocaine.

"Many times, I just sat in my cell and cried," he said from behind a
thick glass partition, in fluid but heavily accented English. "Tears
rolled down my face and I asked myself: `Why is this happening to me?
Why did I put myself in this situation?' "

In state prison, he said, he lived beside hard-core criminals, many
of them violent. In 1996, he was transferred from a prison in Enfield
to one in Brooklyn, Conn., after three other inmates beat him and cut
his scalp.

Since May 1999, Mr. St. Cyr has been incarcerated at Hartford
Correctional Center, where the immigration service placed him after
assuming custody of him from the Connecticut Department of Correction
after he had served the sentence for his cocaine conviction.

Asked how he felt, Mr. St. Cyr, a short, stout man not prone to
bursts of emotion, smiled wanly, leaned his head to the side and
said, "Happy, for a change."

"I consider myself someone that made a mistake," he added later.
"I've been paying for it for six or seven years.

"I've seen people who committed violent crimes do less time than I
have," Mr. St. Cyr said.

He said he was not bitter, and did not blame the I.N.S. for anything.
On the contrary, Mr. St. Cyr, a high-school dropout, said he owed the
agency a small thank you.

"Before, I was acting stupid," he said, referring to his drug use in
the past. "I thought I was acting cool, but I didn't realize at the
time that I was destroying my life. By keeping me in here, I studied
and I got my G.E.D."

Today, in what Mr. Moore called "a severe blow," he said the United
States attorney's office in Connecticut told him that his client
would not be released on bond in the next few weeks and allowed to
wait for his 212c hearing outside an I.N.S. prison, as Mr. Moore had
expected given the Supreme Court ruling.

"They're going to make it as painful as possible," Mr. Moore said.

Mr. St. Cyr, for the time being, must endure at least a few more
months of prison and its monotonous routines. Keeping his spirits up,
he said, is the thought of returning home to his mother, Marie Yvrose
Simeon, whom he has not seen in five years, and traveling to
Dorchester, Mass., to see his father, Eric, whom he has not seen in
seven years.

"From what I've seen in prison, I don't want to come back to this
place anymore, for anything," Mr. St. Cyr said, slowly rubbing his
bearded chin. "For anything."