He’s the Only Convicted Organ Trafficker in the U.S., and Now He Can Stay

ed note–but remember, it’s not because Judaism promotes lying, theft, criminality and hatred of Gentiles, it’s all because of ZIONISM.

Repeat after me please…Judaism is holy and good…Zionism is the problem…

“If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.”–Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsberg

Remember as well that if this were a Muslim or a group of them engaged in the very same behavior and were let off the hook, the JMSM would be SCREEEEEECHING at the top of its lungs how the US Justice Department and USGOV had been ‘co-opted’ and ‘taken over’ by Hamas, ISIS, ISIL, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, etc, and how the next step was them overthrowing the US Constitution, instituting Shariah law and circumcising young girls.

Where, oh where ARE you Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Terry Jones, etc?

Bloomberg

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, left, walks out of federal court in Trenton, N.J., July, 11, 2012, after he was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in a case prosecutors say is the first ever federal conviction for illegally selling human kidneys for profit.

An Israeli citizen who in 2011 became the only person in the U.S. convicted of organ trafficking will remain in the country after a federal immigration agency concluded his crime was “victimless” and not an offense of “moral turpitude,” his lawyer said.

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum completed a 2 1/2-year sentence last week for brokering the sale of kidneys. By permitting his release from a New Jersey prison rather than holding him for deportation, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency concluded that Rosenbaum didn’t engage in a violent or immoral crime that would warrant his expulsion from the U.S., his lawyer said.

“It was a victimless crime because the recipient received a kidney and the donor was remunerated for his contribution,” Edward Shulman, an immigration lawyer in Paterson, New Jersey, said in a phone interview. “Even though he was convicted, it was not immoral what he was doing.”

Rosenbaum, 63, pleaded guilty in 2011 to violating a 1984 U.S. law banning the sale of human organs. He admitted he charged sick Americans as much as $160,000 for a kidney. Prosecutors said he’d been selling kidneys, mostly to American Jews, since 1999. Rosenbaum is now living at home in Brooklyn, New York, Shulman said.

Transplants occurred at top medical centers, Bloomberg News reported. Rosenbaum and his accomplices duped doctors into believing the donations were purely voluntary and not a commercial transaction, prosecutors said. A donor said at Rosenbaum’s sentencing he was paid $25,000 for his kidney.

Kidney Sales

Kidney sales are criminal across the globe, even as some medical ethicists argue they should be legal to address a desperate shortage for those suffering from renal failure. Surgeons and nephrologists have condemned organ trafficking, and the World Health Organization has said the criteria for distributing organs shouldn’t be based on the recipient’s “economic condition.”

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, an anthropology professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has written extensively about black-market kidney sales, cheered Rosenbaum’s 2012 jailing, saying he exploited donors in desperate need of cash, including poor Israelis he smuggled into the U.S. She criticized the U.S. decision to allow Rosenbaum to remain in the country.

“It was a crime of violence because it involved coercion and force, emotion and physical threats of force” against donors, she said in an interview. The U.S. is “refusing to recognize that this was a crime of human trafficking.”

Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment on the case.

Prison Camp

Rosenbaum’s Dec. 17 release from a prison camp at Fort Dix, New Jersey, concluded a first-of-its-kind case that began with his arrest in July 2009. He was one of 44 people charged as part of a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe of money laundering and political corruption in New Jersey. A cooperating witness in that case brought authorities to Rosenbaum and his unrelated kidney-selling scheme.

After pleading guilty, Rosenbaum and his lawyers asked that he be sentenced to probation and community service. A former Rosenbaum client who bought a kidney told the judge he was “an angel” who helped save the lives of people close to death from kidney disease. His lawyers said he earned little from his decade-long kidney scheme.

‘Human Misery’

U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson in Trenton, New Jersey, disagreed after hearing from a donor who said Rosenbaum’s aide refused to let him back out of a kidney sale. She said Rosenbaum was “trading in human misery,” while U.S. prosecutors in New Jersey called him a black-market “profiteer.”

As Rosenbaum’s prison stay neared its end, Shulman said he was contacted by The Aleph Institute, which, according to its website, advocates for Jews in prison. Zvi Boyarsky, who works for the group, said Rosenbaum’s wife didn’t want her husband expelled from the U.S., and the institute put her in touch with Shulman. The group didn’t pay legal fees.

“His entire family is in the United States,” Shulman said in an interview. “He didn’t want to be deported and never return.”

Under U.S. law, aliens can be deported for aggravated felonies, drug offenses, human trafficking, fraud, “crimes of moral turpitude” and other offenses. Shulman said he contacted the New Jersey office of the federal immigration and customs agency and argued that organ trafficking fits none of these categories. Supervisors agreed, he said.

‘Altruistic Experience’

“Donors were willing to donate, they understood their involvement, they were paid for their donations, they felt the altruistic experience of saving a life,” Shulman said. “And they experienced no adverse outcome as a result of their donation.”

Matthew Reilly, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey, declined to comment on the immigration decision.

Scheper-Hughes, who has studied Rosenbaum’s operation, said he ran a sophisticated trafficking business that lured donors to the U.S. under false promises and held some against their will. By working with associates across the globe, he grew wealthy brokering organ sales, she said.

“He was a kidney hunter,” she said.