Secondary Inspection by CBP

[baikal3]

I wish they will deport me to French Polynesia after I become a US citizen.
I won't be in a rush to run at the US Consulate to get a new passport...
These are extreme cases and obviously mistakes.
There's no such thing as deporting a US citizen.
These people were deported because they were thought to be foreign. Somebody should definitely be fired for sure, but let's not spread the panic.

These cases are not extreme and are fairly widespread. If you do some google-searching, you'll find lots more. The problem is that, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, legal and due process protections for people in immigration custody have been substantially eroded. People who, for whatever reason, end up in ICE custody, are presumed to be illegals until and unless they can prove otherwise. They are not, however, given adequate opportunities to do so and even if they manage to prove their citizenship, it takes way too long. Until recently ICE had been under considerable political pressure to produce large numbers of arrests and deportations as quickly as possible. In the absence of proper due process legal protections for the detainees, this has inevitably resulted in strong-armed tactics and "we arrested you and hence you are guilty" mentality by ICE agents.
After initial arrest, ICE often ships off the detainees into rather remote detention centers with few or no free legal help community resources and without providing adequate opportunities for contacting family members and lawyers to request help. The conditions at these detention centers, often run by private contractors, are often horrendous. Combined with threats and other strong-arm tactics by ICE agents this often causes detained U.S. citizens (especially those who are poor or mentally ill) to agree to deportation just to get out of there. Also, in the cases of natural born U.S. citizens claiming such citizenship ICE does not make any attempts to request and check their birth records, even though doing that can be done in minutes.


The bill S. 1549 aims to rectify some of these problems. There were also recent hearings of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration regarding this.

Of course, as I said, for now most citizens U.S. victimized by these practices are those with criminal records (who are often transferred to ICE from criminal custody), poor and mentally ill. But unless the system is changed, eventually much broader population categories will be affected. Indeed, most U.S. citizens do not carry proof of their citizenship on them. So if they are caught up in a neighborhood ICE sweep or a random check, they'll have a heck of a time proving that they are citizens, especially if, as is the current practice, ICE refuses to do on their own even minimal work, such as looking up the birth records, on verifying their citizenship claims.

This is not a cause for panic, but rather a cause for action.

 

[König]

Finally, remember why I posted/commented - simply to dispel the disbelief by the member, Konig.

Please do not forget how this topic was started. I did not say that ICE is never wrong, I just said that it was hard for me to imagine that a law-abiding citizen with proper immigration documents can be easily detained and deported. When you are detained by ICE or CBP, you still have a right to stand before an immigration judge. Federal judges are not low-class high school graduates who immediately dismiss your claims of being the US citizen - they will most likely listen to you if you speak in a clear and definitive fashion. But in order to avoid the deportation or prolonged detention, please do not tell them you are a foreign national and do not agree for a swift deportation process. Learn from these people's mistakes.

 

[baikal3]

Please do not forget how this topic was started. I did not say that ICE is never wrong, I just said that it was hard for me to imagine that a law-abiding citizen with proper immigration documents can be easily detained and deported. When you are detained by ICE or CBP, you still have a right to stand before an immigration judge. Federal judges are not low-class high school graduates who immediately dismiss your claims of being the US citizen - they will most likely listen to you if you speak in a clear and definitive fashion. But in order to avoid the deportation or prolonged detention, please do not tell them you are a foreign national and do not agree for a swift deportation process. Learn from these people's mistakes.

It is too simplistic to blame the detainees themselves here. Yes, in some cases they admitted to being non-citizens and agreed to deportation. But, if you read these news-stories carefully, you'll see that this usually happened in case of threats and pressure from ICE agents; combine this with often horrendous conditions in the ICE detention centers (especially those that are privately run), denial of medical care, etc, it is no wonder that many people agree to sign deportation papers just to escape from these places. In fact, often this seems a faster route to getting home than steadfastly maintaining that you are a U.S. citizen. E.g. among the people mentioned in my original post, Diane Williams (a natural-born U.S. citizen who had a copy of her birth certificate whose validity the ICE agents refused to believe) agreed to be deported to Honduras; there she quickly got a U.S. passport at a U.S. consulate and quickly returned home after that.

By contrast, Hector Veloz, who acquired U.S. citizenship through his father, steadfastly maintained that he was a U.S. citizen from the start, and he was held for 13 months in an ICE prison before finally being released.
Similarly, a naturalized U.S. citizen Rennison Castillo also maintained that he was a U.S. citizen throughout his detention, and he was held for 9 months before being released.

 

[TheRealCanadian]

All of these individuals can get rather rich via a civil rights lawsuit, I would imagine.

 

[Semi-conc'nt 04]

It is too simplistic to blame the detainees themselves here. Yes, in some cases they admitted to being non-citizens and agreed to deportation. But, if you read these news-stories carefully, you'll see that this usually happened in case of threats and pressure from ICE agents; combine this with often horrendous conditions in the ICE detention centers (especially those that are privately run), denial of medical care, etc, it is no wonder that many people agree to sign deportation papers just to escape from these places. In fact, often this seems a faster route to getting home than steadfastly maintaining that you are a U.S. citizen. E.g. among the people mentioned in my original post, Diane Williams (a natural-born U.S. citizen who had a copy of her birth certificate whose validity the ICE agents refused to believe) agreed to be deported to Honduras; there she quickly got a U.S. passport at a U.S. consulate and quickly returned home after that.

By contrast, Hector Veloz, who acquired U.S. citizenship through his father, steadfastly maintained that he was a U.S. citizen from the start, and he was held for 13 months in an ICE prison before finally being released.
Similarly, a naturalized U.S. citizen Rennison Castillo also maintained that he was a U.S. citizen throughout his detention, and he was held for 9 months before being released.

Thanks, Baikal - for the very informative post(s).

Personally, I am sensitive to harranguing innocent people (it does not matter if they are dumb, or cannot speak English like some of us). Your posts reinforce the need for checks and balances.

 

[Mr Vertigo]

I understand that the action does not meet the technical definition - however, that was how the article described, using that term. I imagine they should have used "air-lifted/air-dropped"?

Did ya read my post - how do ya expect someone that was picked up - just like that, to have requisite paper-work on his person to prove overseas when he didn't have the documentation on him to show here (inside the US), in the first place?

Papers can be mailed to him/her, he can prove his identity through a program they have at US embassies, etc.

 

[bmx88]

the New York Times:

One toxic remnant of one of the Bush administration’s failed wars — the one on illegal immigrants — is immigration detention. Wanting to appear tough, Bush officials cobbled together, at great speed and expense, a network of federal centers, state and county lockups and private, for-profit prisons.

The results were ugly. As we learned from reports on the secretive system, detainees were locked up and forgotten. They were denied access to lawyers and their families. They languished, sickened and died without medical attention.

On Tuesday, the National Immigration Law Center issued the first comprehensive report on abuses in a system that holds about 30,000 on any given day and more than 300,000 a year. It found “substantial and pervasive violations” — ignored for years — of the government’s own minimal monitoring requirements.
From the San Francisco Chronicle, there’s this:

When Brian Lyttle got word on April 22 from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala that his brother Mark had been deported to Mexico and bumped around Central America for three months, he was floored. The family had been searching for 31-year-old Mark and feared he was lost or dead. Mark Lyttle was born in Rowan County, N.C., and had never left the United States. He speaks no Spanish and has no Mexican ancestry.

But Mark Lyttle suffers from mental illness. He has bipolar disorder, which requires medication, and is also mentally disabled.

He had been living in a group home when he got into trouble for inappropriately touching an employee. Lyttle pled guilty to a misdemeanor and served 85 days in jail. Instead of being released, he was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because a jail form listed his place of birth as Mexico. ICE did not investigate his citizenship. He spent two months at an Atlanta detention center just miles from his mother, who didn’t know where he was.
and this:

Houston chef Leonard Robert Parrish, 52, wasn’t locked up by ICE or deported, but he did run afoul of a law intended for illegal immigrants. The Brooklyn-born Parrish went down to the Harris County sheriff’s office in September to clear up a problem over a couple of bounced checks. He wound up in jail on immigration charges. He was strip-searched and spent 12 hours in custody.

“The deputy told me I had a foreign accent,” Parrish recalled. “I told him I had an East Coast accent. He said, ‘It sounds like a foreign accent to me.’ “
and this:

Hundreds of U.S. citizens have been detained and, in some cases, deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement….

Cesar Ramirez Lopez, a San Pablo truck driver, won a $10,000 settlement in 2007 after he was held for four days by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents even after his lawyer convinced ICE investigators that he was a citizen.

“When ICE came and detained me, I told the officer I was a citizen,” said Ramirez Lopez, 25. “They told me they didn’t want to hear it, that I was going to get deported.”

Others - detained for months or years and in some cases even deported - are suing for much more. Among them are:

– Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled man born and raised in Southern California, who was deported in 2007 to Mexico, where he survived by eating out of garbage cans for three months while his frantic mother searched for him.

– Rennison Castillo, a Washington state man who was born in Belize but took his oath of citizenship while serving in the U.S. Army in 1998, who spent seven months in an ICE prison in 2006.

“Part of the problem goes back to a system that locks people up when they’re placed in deportation proceedings and then doesn’t provide them with legal representation,” said Matt Adams, the legal director at the project.
…
Some longtime observers of the immigration agency say that, while citizens make up a tiny fraction of the roughly 400,000 people who pass through ICE custody each year, such cases occur with some regularity. The problem is exacerbated, they say, by the fact that immigration detainees, unlike those in the criminal justice system, lack the right to legal counsel and other due process protections.

 

[sarrebal]

There's an easy solution.
Legalize ALL the illegal immigrants (with no criminal record, of course) in the US now. It's irrealistic to find them and deport them.
Build a wall along the border and strictly enforce the law.
That would be the end of it, but I'm afraid that such geniuses like ACLU will oppose this, god knows why.

 

[Huracan]

There's an easy solution.
Legalize ALL the illegal immigrants (with no criminal record, of course) in the US now. It's irrealistic to find them and deport them.
Build a wall along the border and strictly enforce the law.
That would be the end of it, but I'm afraid that such geniuses like ACLU will oppose this, god knows why.

That assumes that all illegal immigration comes from the South. A good chunk does, but it's not all. I guess you'd be surprised about the many faces that illegal immigration take. Rest assured that there are illegal immigrants in this country from anywhere in the world. Think about the Canadian border, would you build a wall there too? Lots of illegal immigrants come that way too, and drugs. Many come on regular flights for "tourism" but then "overstay" their visas and start working and living here.

 

[sarrebal]

That assumes that all illegal immigration comes from the South. A good chunk does, but it's not all. I guess you'd be surprised about the many faces that illegal immigration take. Rest assured that there are illegal immigrants in this country from anywhere in the world. Think about the Canadian border, would you build a wall there too? Lots of illegal immigrants come that way too, and drugs. Many come on regular flights for "tourism" but then "overstay" their visas and start working and living here.

There's no perfect world.
I don't have the statistics (who does?) but I'm pretty sure that vast majority of illegal immigration comes from South.
Build a wall there and enforce it and most of the problem is solved.
People who overstayed are out of status but they did enter the country legally, which is another story.