"Rapper Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters is a married man, a father of two, a taxpayer. Across the last decade, he's earned another distinction: the focus of a long-running legal fight with federal officials who want him deported for a crime committed 16 years ago.

Walters, the eye-patch wearing star behind the `80s rap classic "La-Di-Da-Di," thought he was headed for victory in his immigration case after a federal judge's 2003 ruling sprung him from a Florida detention facility after 17 months.

But Homeland Security officials, in a move that Walters' supporters said was overzealous, pressed forward with the case — and a September federal appeals court ruling in the government's favor led the rapper to wonder how long his past will affect his future.

"The situation we're talking about happened in 1990," Walters said Wednesday. "This is 2006. I don't know if this is about politics, or the law, or what. I'm just leaving it in God's hands."

Walters' woes started when he shot his cousin and a bystander, claiming the cousin had extorted money and threatened his family. Chart-topping Slick Rick became Inmate No. 91A4968, doing time for attempted murder before returning to his family and Bronx home in 1993."
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