Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Of Course ICE Is Deporting Teenage Americans Who Speak No Spanish To Colombia





[document cut here for size, letter dated October 20, 2010]


(Entire settlement here.)

The horrifying experience of Jakadrian Turner, a 14 year-old U.S. citizen who speaks no Spanish but who was deported to Colombia in April, 2011, will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the systematic law-breaking by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, and the failure of the Department of Justice to do anything about it.

Rennison Castillo is an army veteran ICE held for nine months even though he had provided documentation of his U.S. citizenship, a claim acknowledged in an apology written by U.S. Assistant Attorney Phil Lynch in October, 2010 as part of the public settlement that included as well $400,000 and Mr. Lynch's reassurances that ICE had new procedures in place to "avoid this happening again to a fellow U.S. [c]itizen."

If ICE is going to hold an Army vet and ignore his pleas for nine months, what chance does a 14 year old girl have of having ICE agents respect her U.S. citizenship?

Mr. Lynch's good intentions notwithstanding, since October, 2010 several cases have been documented of ICE doing not only detaining, but deporting their fellow U.S. citizens, including the still ongoing experiences of a teenager whose human not to mention civil rights were so egregiously violated. This is because ICE is just not used to following the law -- but it is used to bullying people and deporting the evidence.

Another lawsuit settlement ICE appears to have recently violated is Perez-Funez v. District Director, a 1985 case that, according to Maricela Garcia, and according to a USCIS regulation, prohibits ICE from entering into "agreements from unaccompanied children unless they were first given notice of their rights and put in contact with a relative or a nonprofit organization," actions that appear not to have occurred.

Once again, U.S. citizens are the 900 pound gorilla in the mine: if even U.S. citizens are having their rights violated, then we are learning quite a bit about the unlawful treatment of everyone else, for instance, the 15 year-old detained boy who I recently heard via a digital recording in an immigration court for proceedings in Oakdale that deported Andres Robles, a U.S. citizen, in 2008.

The adjudicator who heard the case, John Duck, Jr., presiding over the Oakdale detained docket, never bothered to stop the proceedings to ask the boy if he had spoken with his family about his agreement to be deported, or had been in touch with a nonprofit. This teenager had no criminal convictions, nor did most of the respondents for that master calendar hearing when they agreed to their removal.

Coincidentally all the Notices to Appear announced in the court that day in Oakdale only listed entry dates if they were more recent than ten years; for the majority the date was simply "unknown" and the adjudicator who presided did nothing to ascertain the approximate range of the pro se respondents' entry into the United States much less explain the possibility of relief. (My inference was that if people had been here more than ten years the ICE agents simply omitted this information and the respondents, who had no understanding of what was going on, would not object when the NTA information was reviewed.)

If Mr. Lynch wants to make good on his assurances to Mr. Castillo, then he might want to investigate the ICE agents who deported Ms. Turner for false imprisonment and kidnapping, as well as the possibility of travel document fraud -- how does Ms. Turner make it into Colombia without a passport or any identifying information she is from there, including speaking Spanish?

For "U.S. Government Unlawfully Detaining and Deporting U.S. Citizens as Aliens," Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, please go here (115 pp).

UPDATE January 6, 2012: My interview today on "Democracy Now" on the subject of Ms. Turner's deportation and that of other U.S. citizens.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is DHS, the entity which all other government agencies are forced to report to and obey. Where their rule is final and absolute, there's no real oversight or consequences for violating the constitution, and the adjudication and appeals process is so laughably unfair and biased (the judge is a second prosecutor in the courtroom, and the appeals process involves one guy stamping "appeal denied" 1000 times a day without bothering to read what is written), that we would probably be threatening to overthrow the system if they ruled over a foreign country instead of our own.

America's never going to be a free society again until Homeland Security is destroyed and replaced with reason and concern for the rights of the people it is supposed to protect.

Anonymous said...

and yet the double stand exists they have not deported posada carriles a known terrorist walking freely w/o documentation that can not get asylym nor become a citizen thue to his involvement in the drug trade. I did a petition on change.org http://www.change.org/petitions/why-is-luis-posada-carriles-still-here-undocumented-2

And here is the text
Why is Luis Posada Carriles still here undocumented?
Why This Is Important
Investigate of why incriminating evidence against Luis Posada Carriles
was destroyed/removed. Prosecute Carriles.

For decades Luis Posada Carriles has committed crimes again humanity.
World-wide he is known as the Bin Laden of this hemisphere. Due to his
terrorist actions- he can not get citizenship nor asylum. The CIA
stopped using him in the 1990s due to Carriles involvement in the drug
trade. Some seemed to forgot or put blinders on the involvement of
Carriles with Bush and Oliver North in the Iran- Contras.

Many immigrants have been detained/deported and in many cases removed
to Mexico regardless of their originating country.The same should
happen to Carriles instead of awaiting for a country to be asked to
take him.

It is known that Carriles was in Dallas when John F. Kennedy was
assassinated and played a role November 22, 1963. Besides downing a
plane that was mostly of teenagers of color in international waters;
he also had a role in placing a bomb in Washington DC killing an
ambassador and an American (wounding her husband); and a role in
murders in New Jersey and Miami.
Carriles having 4 decades of terrorism. The war on terrorism forgot
one -Carriles.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/10/AR2006111001384.html PLEASE SIGN

Anonymous said...

i am a united stated stated army honorably discharged veteran that served in the persian gulf i been deported to el salvador since 2008 i had not seen this country since i was 12 i was a permanent resident of the u.s furthermore because of the ina act i am a national of the united states due to my service and on top of that i am partially disable due to my military service, ICE and DHS and THE JUDGE didnt give a damm about that i was deported and when i got here i was in the street my family wired me money western union but could i get it if did not have a salvadorian id card or any other document i slept in public parks i had to beg i am doing better now only thing i can say is my miliray trainning kicked in thats the only thing that helped survive there are more veterans in this situation i always say we can improvise, we can adapt but we will never overcome being trown out from the country we gave the best of our years to, the country we help defend, and we will do it again if given the chance. rayr561@yahoo.com