ICE Detains Polish Doctor Living In US For 40 Years

KALAMAZOO, MI — A respected Kalamazoo, Michigan, doctor whose parents fled social turmoil in Poland when he was 5 has been detained by federal immigration officials and could be deported back to a country where he doesn’t speak the language or have any relationships. The notice to detain Dr. Lukasz Niec, 43, a permanent legal resident of the United States since 1989, apparently stems from two misdemeanor convictions when he was a teenager.

Niec was arrested Jan. 16 at his home in Kalamazoo by U.S. Immigration, Customs and Enforcement agents. He is being held at the Calhoun County correctional facility pending bond and deportation hearings, which his family says could take up to six months.

Niec entered the United States illegally in 1987, ICE officials said in a statement to Patch on Tuesday. "He is amenable to removal proceedings as a result of two 1992 state convictions for malicious destruction of property and receiving stolen property, both of which are crimes involving moral turpitude," the agency said.

ICE said Niec "most recently came under agency scrutiny as a result of 18 encounters with local law enforcement," and that he will remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of removal proceedings.

"As ICE Deputy Director Thomas Homan has made clear, ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement," the statement continued. "All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.

Patch has reached out to Niec’s wife, Rachelle Burkart-Niec, and his sister, Iwona Niec-Villaire, for comment. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

Niec’s parents, both physicians, packed him and his sister up and fled the People’s Republic of Poland in 1979, two years before the authoritarian Communist government imposed martial law to quash political opposition. The family settled in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

In 1992 when he was 17, Niec pleaded guilty to a pair of misdemeanor charges, one for malicious destruction of property valued at under $100 and another for receiving and concealing stolen property over $100 and a financial transaction device. Both convictions were expunged under Michigan’s Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, but they can be used against him in a deportation hearing, his sister Iwona Niec-Villaire, a corporate lawyer, told The Washington Post.

“It’s shocking,” Niec-Villaire told The Post. “No one can really understand what happened here.”

She told WOOD-TV the misdemeanors “were just an adolescent making mistakes and learning from them.”

But in the eyes of the law, the misdemeanors involved “moral turpitude,” which is cause for deportation under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

After getting a second chance under the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, Niec went on to graduate from Western Michigan University and then medical school at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica. In 2007, he began practicing internal medicine at Bronson Healthcare System in Kalamazoo, where he is a hospitalist.

Niec does have other blemishes on his record, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette, which cited Kalamazoo County court records showing a he pleaded guilty in 2008 to operating a motor vehicle while impaired by liquor. He completed probation, the plea was withdrawn and the case was dismissed, the newspaper said. In 2013, a jury found him not guilty of domestic violence.

Niec married his current wife Burkart-Niec, a charge nurse at a Bronson Hospital, in 2016 after a four-year courtship. He had planned to apply for citizenship, but with their busy schedules, they hadn’t gotten around to it. Their blended family includes two children, ages 6 and 12.

The physician had worked a full week, including some double shifts, without a break due to the influenza epidemic and had a day off last Tuesday when ICE agents came to the family’s home and arrested him. Burkhart-Niec thought it "was a prank" when he called her to say he was in jail

"I didn't think this could happen to us," she told the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Using the hashtag #freedoctorniec, Burkhart-Niec wrote on Facebook that her husband is a hard-working member of the Kalamazoo community who pays taxes and owns a home.

“With the latest influenza epidemic his expertise is urgently needed at the hospital due to short staffing and an overwhelming number of intake patients. We need Lukasz at home and doing what he does best taking care of others!”

His colleagues offer only praise for Niec.

"He's an excellent citizen, an excellent physician. He's well respected and well liked," Bronson colleague Penny Rathburn told the Kalamazoo Gazette. "He's not a threat to our society.”

Colleagues also wrote letters to an immigration judge on Bronson Healthcare letterhead.

"The consensus about his character is overwhelming with no single complaint I have ever heard from anyone over 10 years," his cowoker Dr. Kwsai Al-Rahha wrote in a petition to an immigration judge. "He is loving, caring and respectful. I have seen how he treats my own family and my kids love 'uncle Lucas.' I truly hope you give him the chance to know him.”

In past administrations, such low-level offenses haven’t been considered cause for deportation. But President Trump has taken a hard line on immigration and even those with no criminal record may be targeted.

A permanent green card used to provide enough security for immigrants to put down roots in the United States, Niec-Villaire, the doctor’s sister, told The Washington Post.

“You couldn’t vote, but that was really the only difference,” said Niec-Villaire, who received citizenship when she was in law school. “That’s not the case anymore. . . . Having that status is no longer enough.”

Niec’s wife and sister are hopeful Gov. Rick Snyder will intervene and pardon his misdemeanor offenses. His sister has hired an attorney and is plowing through family records — both of their parents are deceased — and that may show that he is a citizen by default if their obtained her citizenship before Niec turned 18.

"He's taken care of the people of the U.S. as a physician, he's taken care of the people of this community, this state," Burkhart-Niec told the Kalamazoo newspaper. "After all this time, when is somebody finally free?

"Just because this guy was born in another country, it shouldn't mean that 20-plus years later he can be taken out of his home on a Tuesday,” she said.

Niec-Villaire told The Post her brother is “as American as anyone gets” and has no relationships in or cultural affinity for Poland, a country he has visited only once since their parents took them out of the country with only what they could pack in two suitcases.

“He can’t be deported,” his wife told The Post. “He can’t speak Polish. He wouldn’t know where to go. He would be lost.”

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