ICE Deports Latino Citizens

Duarnis Perez became a citizen at age 15 when his mother naturalized.  He was deported anyway and then arrested when he reentered the U.S. across the border from Canada.  He spent nearly five years in jail for unlawful reentry.  Upon his release, an ICE officer finally bothered to check the records and discovered he had been a U.S. citizen the whole time.  But it's ok, because:

"ICE does not detain United States citizens," said spokesman Richard Rocha, adding that agents thoroughly investigated people's claims of citizenship. "ICE only processes an individual for removal when all available facts indicate that the person is an alien."

It's a good thing we have vigilant scholars, lawyers, and journalists to politely point out the instances in which ICE is caught telling a lie.  In this case, it's Jacqueline Stevens:

I have additional information on US citizens in removal proceedings--I've documented over 160 cases in recent years of individuals whose claims to US citizenship have been affirmed by an immigration judge, USCIS agent, jury, or federal judge and yet who at some point were detained, deported, or convicted of immigration crimes predicated on alienage.

These are only the cases where the government's mistake was detected.  Stevens estimates there have been thousands of cases where U.S. citizens have wrongly been placed into removal proceedings, which are structured in a way that seems designed to perpetuate such errors.

But ICE doesn't care, ALIPAC doesn't care, Bill O'Reilly doesn't care because the names of these citizens are Castillo and Perez and Guzman.  It's all the same to them ... another Latin@ deported ... no big deal if the deported had their papers or not, even if they did, their parents or grandparents probably didn't.  If the people being wrongfully deported were named Christensen or Harris or Jones, ICE officers would be more careful about who they locked up.

[Image: Deported U.S. citizen Pedro Guzman]