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Leon Wildes, Immigration Lawyer Who Prevented John Lennon’s Deportation, Dies at 90
The prominent lawyer had been in failing health after a series of strokes.
His name would become part of musical and political history after an old law school classmate, Alan Kahn, called in 1972 and told him that Lennon and Yoko Ono needed his help getting their visas extended. On Oct. 7, a federal appeals court judge in New York reversed the deportation order, citing the government’s “secret political grounds.” Two days later, on Lennon’s 35th birthday, Ono gave birth to their son, Sean. When President Barack Obama launched his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), for which some children of immigrants were granted temporary relief from deportation, he drew upon reasoning similar to what Wildes had revealed on behalf of Lennon: prosecutorial discretion.
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