Thread: Ex-SoCal Councilwoman Could Be Deported

http://www.dailytimes.com/wire.lasso?re ... EPORTATION

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- All of her life, Zoila Meyer believed she was an American. She even won election to the City Council of Adelanto.

But now she is facing a threat of deportation for illegally voting, because she never became a citizen after being brought to this country from Cuba when she was 1 year old.

"To be honest with you, I'm scared. How can they just pluck me out of my family, my kids?" the 40-year-old mother of four said in a telephone interview Friday.

"If they can do this to me, they can do it to anybody," she said.

After Meyer was elected to the council in Adelanto in 2004, someone told officials that she was born in Cuba, prompting an investigation.

Eventually, "the police came to me and said, 'Zoila, you're not a citizen. You're a legal resident but you're not a citizen,'" said Meyer, who now lives in the San Bernardino County desert town of Apple Valley, near Adelanto.

She resigned after 10 weeks in office in Adelanto, a town of about 23,000.

Meyer, whose story was first reported in the Victorville Daily Press, applied to become a naturalized citizen and continued with her life: raising her children and attending two local colleges to earn degrees toward her goal of working in the justice system as a forensic nurse.

However, because she was not a citizen, Meyer faced a felony charge of illegally voting in the 2004 election.

In April 2006, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting and was placed on probation, fined and ordered to pay restitution.

What Meyer didn't realize is that fraudulently voting is a deportable offense.

On June 18, Meyer said, immigration officials showed up at her home and told her to appear at their San Bernardino office.

Her husband drove her to the office on Tuesday, "and they handcuffed me," Meyer said. "They put me in jail and they frisked me and processed me."

"I said 'You're doing this because I voted?"'

The case is unusual but immigration officials were just doing their job when they arrested Meyer, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"People are arrested on immigration charges from all walks of life," she said. "She can plead her case before an immigration judge, if she feels that she has reason to seek release for removal. ... Everybody has due process when they're arrested."

Meyer was released pending a July 18 appearance before an immigration judge who will determine whether she will be deported to Canada, the last point of entry into the U.S. recorded in her immigration record.

Meyer said she and her parents had visited Canada and she had gone many times to Mexico without anyone ever asking her to prove her citizenship.

Meyer said she does not support illegal immigration but she thinks immigration procedures should be changed to prevent misunderstandings.

"It makes me feel like we're all just numbers," she said of her case. "I see people writing 'this is my country.' It really isn't. It belongs to the government and they decide who stays and who goes .... You think you're free; you're really not."

Makes you wonder if, in the future, there could be people in Congress and other high positions there are NOT citizens. There was a cop in Minnisota that was an illegal alien. He just took his cousin's indentity after his death.

We have a "anchor baby" running for President....Bill Richardson. He came out and admitted he only supported AG Gonzales because he was Hispanic. Can you possibly imagine the disaster it would be if this man became President??

I have mixed feeling on this if the woman really believed that she was citizen she is just another cuban immigrant and should have to get her citizenship before anything else happens. Then again I don't believe that cubans should have the pass that they have had. They are one of the reasons that we are having so much problems. Instead of being thank for and becoming americans they want americans to learn spanish and learn their culture.

This is frustrating because we all know that illegals have been arrested numerous times for different criminal offenses but NEVER deported. I have to side with this woman who has been here for basically her whole life. Certainly she fell under the 1986 amnesty, although she never became a legal citizen. The problem lies with our inept govt officials who make it possible for a non-citizen to be called for jury duty and even vote in elections. It would seem the woman is being truthful, otherwise why would she risk jail and/or deportation to cast 1 vote. I hope once all the facts are considered she will be allowed to stay as the upstanding resident she seems to be. Why does ICE focus on these types of cases, but turn a blind eye to true criminal aliens? Somebody help me out here...