COWBOY SEH HIM CANT GO BACK A JAMAICA AFTER HIM TESTIFY AGAINST DUDUS

Undocumented man who cooperated in case against Jamaican kingpin Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke fights deadly deportation

Undocumented man who cooperated in case against Jamaican kingpin Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke fights deadly deportation
Jamaican gang leader Christopher “Dudus” Coke
An undocumented immigrant who helped the government bring down one of Jamaica’s most notorious drug kingpins is fighting deportation, which he says is tantamount to a death sentence.

The man, identified in court papers only as Sean B., was a cooperating witness in the case against Christopher “Dudus” Coke beginning in 2009, which made him a marked man. He was known in the gang as “cowboy.”

“If I return to Jamaica, I am dead as soon as I get off the plane. I testified against one of the most powerful men in Jamaica,” Sean B. said in a sworn statement.

“Being a snitch in Jamaica is one of the worst things you can do and I am branded as one for the rest of my life. I will be killed in Jamaica if I return.”

Sean, who once served as a general in Coke’s Shower Posse Gang, was not exaggerating.

“Since (Sean’s) testimony, his sister’s house was burned down, the house of his children’s mother was bombed, six of his cousins have been murdered, and his father was forced to flee the country,” New Jersey District Judge Kevin McNulty wrote in a ruling Monday.

The life-or-death stakes were made clear during Sean’s recent unwanted three-day return to Jamaica courtesy of ICE. On May 30 immigration agents put him on a private plane bound for Kingston before the government received a restraining order signed by McNulty blocking the deportation.

“What happened when he got removed was cinematic in terms of how insane it was,” Sean’s attorney Gregory Copeland said. His client tried to lay low with a family friend, a sister and others. But during a walk outside, people were waiting for him with a machete and sawed-off shotgun, Copeland said. Sean jumped over fences, hopped in a cab and frantically called his legal team back in the U.S. from a payphone.

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Three days later, Sean was back in ICE custody thanks to Judge McNulty, who ordered he be returned to America. Federal agents hid Sean in a hotel in Jamaica until he could be put on a plane, his other attorney Craig Relles said.

Sean has been held in ICE jail ever since.

“I find it quite likely that a person in that position in Jamaica — in hiding, and under a threat of death — could not effectively litigate an immigration appeal,” McNulty wrote.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, the death threats, if carried out, would moot and defeat the review process.”

Sean had numerous run-ins with U.S. authorities before becoming a cooperating witness, including two deportations for illegal entry. After trying to come in a third time in 2009, he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges and began working with the government.

Sean “was a critical witness in the Coke investigation. He testified at great personal risk to himself and offered firsthand insight into Coke’s organization and how it operated in Jamaica and the United States,” said John Zach, a lawyer who was one of the federal prosecutors on the Coke case.

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A manhunt for Coke in 2010 resulted in an “armed insurgency” in Jamaica that left 70 dead, McNulty noted. The Kingston kingpin was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2012.

Sean, meanwhile, was allowed to work in the U.S. Why he ended up on ICE’s radar in Jan. 2019 is unclear. An agency spokeswoman declined to comment on the case but noted Sean’s numerous criminal convictions.

Sean has a bail hearing in immigration court next week.

“He can’t go back to Kingston. He’s a dead man,” Relles said.