Leon Wildes, who fought to prevent John Lennon’s deportation, dies at 90

Leon Wildes, the prominent immigration lawyer known for his groundbreaking, years-long fight to stop John Lennon's deportation in the 1970s and for former Beatles to gain permanent U.S. residency, has died at the age of 90.

Wilde died Monday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. His son, Michael Wilde, an immigration lawyer and mayor of Inglewood, New Jersey, said his health had deteriorated due to a series of strokes.

Leon Wilde, a graduate of New York University School of Law, co-founded the firm Wilde & Weinberg in 1960 and gained enough stature by the end of the decade to serve as president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Ever since his law school classmate Alan Cahn called him in 1972 to tell him that John Lennon and Yoko Ono needed his help extending their visas, his name became a household name in music and political history. It will become a part of it.

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Wilde agreed to meet the couple at the Manhattan offices of Apple Records, the label founded by the Beatles in the late 1960s. But he did make one embarrassing confession about John Lennon and his artist wife.

“I have no idea who these people are,” Khan said, later saying he misheard their names as “Jack Lemmon and Yoko Moto.”

What Mr. Wildes initially thought was a procedural matter, turned into one of the most dramatic legal battles of the era. Lennon and Ono immigrate to New York City from England and are trying to track down Ono's stepchild, Kyoto, who was kidnapped by her ex-husband.

John and Yoko were also active in the New Left politics of the time, opposing the Vietnam War and supporting the effort to defeat President Richard Nixon for re-election. With the minimum voting age lowered from 21 to 18, John Lennon's plans include a 1972 tour of the United States, which could potentially involve millions of young people. there were.

As government documents later revealed, some Nixon supporters were concerned that Lennon could damage Nixon politically. In a February 1972 memo to Sen. Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina and member of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, aides recommended a “strategic countermeasure” to terminate Lennon's visa. Was. (The government also tried to expel Ms. Ono, who was originally from Tokyo, but she was granted permanent resident status in 1973).

Thurmond forwarded the memo to Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, whose deputy, Richard Kleindienst, contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In March, the INS notified the British rock star that his visa would not be extended. Officials were referring to a 1968 London drug bust in which John Lennon pleaded guilty to possessing “cannabis resin.” Under U.S. law at the time, nonresidents were subject to deportation if they were convicted of laws or regulations related to illegal possession of drugs or marijuana.

For the next two years, Lennon and Ono endured continued harassment by the government, with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sometimes personally involved. Their phones were tapped and their locations closely tracked. Lennon will say the pressure led to the temporary breakdown of her marriage. The musician left for Los Angeles in 1973 and embarked on what he called a “long weekend” of drinking and drugs that ended in 1975 with the couple reconciling.

Meanwhile, musicians, writers and other celebrities called on the government to allow him to stay. Everyone from Fred Astaire and Dick Cavett to Saul Bellow and Stevie Wonder signed letters of support. Bob Dylan wrote a handwritten note praising John and Yoko as enemies of “this bland, boring commercialism” imposed on culture by the “overwhelming mass media.”

The Lennon family didn't always help their cases. When they held their first press conference to discuss the deportation order, they pulled tissues from their pockets and declared the birth of a new nation, Nutopia, “a paradise for humans without land, borders, or passports.” . . ” As representatives of Nutopia, John and Yoko granted themselves diplomatic immunity.

Wiles recalled that Yoko later apologized.

“Leon, please understand. We are artists. We have a message,” she told him.

Thanks to Wilde's ingenuity and the shocking developments in 1970s politics, Lennon's deportation was delayed and eventually reversed. Mr. Wildes discovered a loophole in immigration drug laws after Mr. Lennon told his lawyer that he had been convicted of possessing hashish, not marijuana (“Hash is so much better than marijuana!” Lennon said) joked). Wildes also highlighted the government's vague and unrecognized policy of “prosecutorial discretion,” in which authorities use different criteria when deciding whether to pursue immigration cases.

Meanwhile, the FBI's targeting of Lennon ended with Nixon's re-election in 1972, and the INS movement to deport him began to lose momentum after Nixon resigned in August 1974 due to the escalation of the Watergate scandal. By October 1975, Mitchell was one of many former high-ranking Nixon officials. While in prison, John Lennon was celebrating a special milestone week. On October 7, a federal appeals court judge in New York reversed the deportation order, citing the government's “secret political basis.” Two days later, on Lennon's 35th birthday, Ono gave birth to his son Sean.

For the final hearing in July 1976, Wiles brought in Norman Mailer and Gloria Swanson, among others, to testify on Lennon's behalf, and the INS granted John a green card.

After the hearing, Lennon said: “It's great that it's legal again.”

The legacy of Lennon's struggles will linger for decades. When President Barack Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants temporary relief from deportation to some immigrant children, he announced that Mr. Wildes was clearly replacing Lennon. It drew on a similar argument, namely prosecutorial discretion.

Rock stars were also influenced.Mick Jagger, who was also arrested on drug charges in the UK, was among those who found it easy to travel to America.

In her 2005 book, “Memories of John Lennon,'' published on the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, Jagger wrote, “My passport says that I am eligible for a visa because of John Lennon's antecedents.'' It says it will be revoked.” “That's why I think of him every time I enter this country.”

Wilde continued to practice law after his time with John Lennon, serving as an adjunct professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law for more than 30 years. His awards include the Edith Lowenstein Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in advancing the practice of immigration law and the Elmer Freed Excellence in Teaching Award.

Wilde has been married three times, most recently to Alice Goldberg Wilde, and has two children, eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

The long and winding road to delaying deportation started with John Lennon

Wilde, who is of European Jewish descent, grew up in a small community in Pennsylvania, where he was often the only Jew in his class. He attended Yeshiva University as an undergraduate and became interested in immigration law after working for the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society in the late 1950s. Mr. Wildes has published articles in Cardozo Law Review, among other magazines, and wrote a book about the John Lennon case, “John Lennon vs. America,” published in 2016.

An opera fan in his youth, he was so immersed in the world of the Beatles that he would use “Imagine” as the music to listen to when calls were put on hold at his office. He maintained a close relationship with Yoko, appeared in the 2006 documentary The US vs. John Lennon, and attended several Beatles conventions, including a Chicago-based festival for Beatles fans. .

“I spoke there three times, and every time I spoke, dozens of people came up and shook my hand and thanked me for what I had done for John Lennon,” he said in 2017. told Pennyblackmusic.co.uk. “These wonderful people taught me that enjoying this beautiful music of the Beatles is truly amazing and something to enjoy. I learned a lot about that kind of music, and now… Now, I like that too.”