Today's Washington Post addresses a generally underreported phenomenon: the detention, harassment, and even deportation of U.S. citizens and legal residents by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. I feel that this is an incredibly disturbing precedent being set, especially at a time when 300,000 are detained each year by the ICE. This latest development is but one out of many nefarious results of the post-9/11 American security-state. As always, it disproportionately targets those with darker skin and negligible incomes.
In this diary, I will list numerous cases in which the due process rights and legal niceties many of us take for granted are denied for those who do indeed have every right to be here. They are legally documented residents, and thus should be treated with dignity and be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Kebin Reyes: Detained for ten hours along with his father by ICE agents who raided his home in San Rafael, California. He and his father were held "in a locked room and [...] were only provided with bread and water."
Thomas Warziniack: Small-town drifter who was proclaimed by the ICE to be an illegal immigrant from Russia and held for weeks in a detention center in Arizona. When asked for comment on the case, an ICE spokeswoman said that "[t]he burden of proof is on the individual to show they're legally entitled to be in the United States."
Pedro Guzman: 30 year-old mentally challenged Californian who was jailed for a misdemeanor trespassing charge. He signed a document stating that he was a citizen of Mexico and had no residency rights in the U.S. despite that fact that he cannot read or write. He was subsequently transferred to ICE custody and then deported to Tijuana. He spent the next three months wandering the U.S. Mexican border and eating garbage until the border patrol finally allowed him back in.
Sharon McKnight: Deported from the U.S. to Jamaica after returning from a visit to her grandfather in Jamaica. Impaired with a developmental disorder that allows her only the "the mental capacity of a young child," she was
left overnight in a room at the airport, handcuffed and shackled to a chair. She was neither fed nor permitted to use the bathroom. In the morning she was deported to Jamaica. Upon her arrival there, baggage porters at the airport donated money to her for bus fare. She was permitted to return to the United States only after the intervention of a Member of Congress. Later describing her ordeal, Ms. McKnight said she had been treated like an animal and suffered from continuing nightmares as a result of the experience.
Deolinda Smith-Willmore: A partially blind schizophrenic who, while serving time for assaulting a neighbor, declared herself to be a Dominican. The U.S. subsequently deported her to the Dominican Republic, where she was put in a nursing home and obtained her birth certificate with the help of an attorney.
Even after the government admitted its mistake in deporting her, it refused to issue her documents that would permit her to return to the United States under her real name until the media took interest in the case.
"Mr. D.": Upon returning to the U.S. from Mexico, was accused of fabricating documents proving his citizenship due to the fact that someone else had stolen his identity. He was threatened with 20 years in jail in order to pressure him into claiming that he wasn't a U.S. citizen.
Mr. D was detained at the airport for two days in a room with other INS detainees. The room did not have a bed, so he slept on the floor. He asked to use a telephone but was refused. Mr. D was then transferred to the Mira Loma Detention Facility in the middle of the night.
Mr. D would spend 45 days in detention before finally being released.
Unnamed Ethiopian refugee: Detained for a year and a half before his citizenship was recognized. The reason for this was was the "ICE’s transposition of two numbers in its translation of his birth certificate."
René Saldivar: 38-year-old who was sent to immigration detention after serving two-month jail sentence. Was only able to contact his family after spending five months in the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. Eventually released after several more weeks of bureacratic bumbling with documentation.
Anna: Paranoid schizophrenic who was arrested for prostitution. Taken to the Eloy Detention Center after declaring her place of birth to be "Paris."
On February 20 immigration judge Thomas Michael O'Leary, who had Anna's records, including the diagnoses of the court psychiatrists, issued an order to remove Anna from the country. The French consulate refused to issue travel documents for her, telling ICE that Anna is not a French citizen. Having been possibly stripped of her citizenship rights in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Americans With Disabilities Act, Anna will be held in detention for at least three months. If released, she is not functional enough to attend the meetings ICE requires of aliens remaining in the country with deportation orders. A warrant for her arrest will be issued, and in her next encounter with law enforcement the warrant will trigger an arrest.
Many more examples can be found at the numerous resources I linked to in this diary.
Whether it's no-knock raids, reckless tasering, broad counter-terrorism measures, or out-of-control immigration enforcement; we seem to have everything to fear from our government these days.