Deport First, Ask Questions Later

by Dave Bennion · 2009-04-13 21:08:00 UTC
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Suzanne Gamboa has more today in the AP's series on U.S. citizens--almost all of them Latin@--who have been detained or deported because of flaws in the immigration system.  The latest article has a few grafs that get right to the heart of the problem:

The American judicial system deems everyone innocent until proven guilty and guarantees a fair hearing with a lawyer - but not when it comes to immigration. Then there are far fewer rights. And as the system comes under pressure from a flood of new cases, the strain is showing.

One result is that U.S. citizens arrested as illegal immigrants or deportable residents cannot count on the legal system as a safety net. The odds are stacked against them.

. . .

Those who go through the immigration legal system can be arrested without a warrant. They are not read their rights unless it's a criminal case. They do not get a lawyer unless they can pay or find one who will work for free. They can be deported without hearings. And until this January, they didn't get a free phone call.

"They are deporting a very large number of people in very fast ways, often under the radar of any review by courts," said Daniel Kanstroom, director of the International Human Rights Program at the Boston College Law School. "Deportation of citizens is the tip of the iceberg. ... The system is in dramatic, desperate need of reform."

There's a separate article detailing individual stories of citizens detained or deported by ICE.  Whether the analysis of citizenship was simple or complex, in each case listed, ICE, the DOJ, or local law enforcement did not devote sufficient resources to make a timely determination before a citizen was wrongly detained or deported.

And while many of the people listed were convicted of crimes, exile is not a fair sentence for any of the crimes described.  But it's what many of these U.S. citizens nearly got.  And they only got it because some law enforcement officer wrongly assumed--usually on the basis of skin color or an accent--that the individual was not a citizen.

What these articles don't--and can't--tell us are the stories of those who were deported and never made it back.

[Image: Rene Saldivar, AP]

Dave Bennion
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