Thread: U.S. citizens caught up in immigration sweeps

U.S. citizens caught up in immigration sweeps

By Andrew Becker and Patrick J. McDonnell
8:35 PM PDT, April 8, 2009

Reporting from Tacoma, Wash., and Los Angeles -- Rennison Vern Castillo thought his legal troubles were nearly over at the end of a jail stay for harassing his ex-girlfriend. But then a U.S. immigration hold order blocked his release.

"They think you're here illegally," a jailhouse guard said to him.

A risky new push for immigration legislation
Castillo, mystified, insisted it was all a mistake. Though born in Belize, he had come of age in South-Central Los Angeles, spoke fluent English, served a stint in the Army and had become an American citizen about seven years earlier.

He had some legal problems, but being in the country unlawfully was not one of them. Castillo said he wasn't worried -- not until he was shackled and transferred to a federal detention center. He spent months in custody before an appeals panel blocked his deportation and an immigration judge finally ordered Castillo set free.

Although his case is an extreme example, mistaken detentions are drawing increased attention as immigration officials mount workplace roundups and jailhouse sweeps in search of undocumented immigrants.

Immigration raids of factories and other work sites often result in at least a short-term detention of lawful residents and even citizens, as agents seal targeted businesses and grill workers about their status.

Officials in Washington said last month that the Obama administration was expected to rein in the controversial workplace raids -- shifting enforcement emphasis to target employers rather than workers. Immigrant advocates have long pushed for such a change, while others say easing workplace enforcement will encourage illegal immigration.

Castillo is one of many citizens and legal residents held for suspected immigration violations -- some for a few hours, some for much longer. No agency tracks such incidents so statistical totals are not available.

Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement downplay the problem.

"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."

He declined to comment on Castillo's case or others, citing privacy concerns or pending lawsuits.

The surge in ICE workplace actions during the Bush administration spawned fierce complaints from employees caught up in dragnets at factories, slaughterhouses and poultry farms.

Mike Graves, a two-decade veteran of the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, said he was handcuffed and held for eight hours in December 2006 when ICE agents raided Swift plants throughout the heartland.

"My government treated me like a criminal, and I didn't do anything wrong," said Graves, a native of Iowa.

An ICE raid last year at a Van Nuys printer cartridge manufacturer, Micro Solutions Enterprises, generated wrongful-arrest claims from more than 100 citizens, said Peter Schey, chief lawyer at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles. All were held for two to three hours before being released, Schey said.

Americans seldom carry proof of their legal status, which can be a factor in the confusion about detainees' citizenship. There is no comprehensive database or list of all citizens for agents to check.

Official investigations may miss crucial documents such as birth certificates and naturalization papers. In some cases, names have been jumbled or misfiled and records lost. Confused detainees have signed their own removal orders. Some in custody may even be unaware of their citizenship or unable to prove it without a lawyer's help.

Unlike suspects in criminal matters, however, immigration detainees have no right to government-appointed counsel -- and, in some cases, have no access to paid lawyers. Fast-track deportation procedures enacted by Congress in recent years also limit court review once the expulsion process is underway.

In border regions like Southern California, residents on both sides of the international boundary have for generations moved back and forth without regard for passports, status or birth certificates. Many U.S. citizens by birth or parentage have no proof of their status.

Frank Ponce de Leon, a native of Mexico who lives in La Puente, got out of ICE custody Dec. 31 after spending almost three months locked up -- all the while insisting he was a citizen. The longtime California resident had never sought citizenship because he was the son of an American-born parent. His father was a New Mexico native and U.S. serviceman during World War II.

"I knew they couldn't hold me forever, and sooner or later they would see it my way because I had every right," said Ponce de Leon, 47, whose five California-born children include a daughter, Deanne, 22, who served in Iraq as an Army nurse.

On occasion, the uncertainty can lead to mistaken deportation, as was the case with Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen living in Lancaster.

U.S. immigration officials shipped Guzman to Tijuana in May 2007 from the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where he was being held on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. The Los Angeles native, then 29, spent three months rummaging for food in dumps and sleeping in the Mexican borderlands as his desperate mother, a fast-food cook, searched for him in hospitals, shelters, jails and morgues, his family said.

Eventually Guzman, a cement finisher with limited Spanish and a second-grade reading ability, was reunited with his family in the border town of Calexico.

The Guzman case sparked Washington hearings at which immigration authorities were chastised by Congress members and accused of "stunning incompetence." ICE officials called the case an aberration and vowed to review all citizenship claims before anyone was detained or deported.

Out of more than 1 million detentions, ICE officials say, Guzman was the only citizen known to have been shipped out of the country. But others dispute that claim.

Rachel E. Rosenbloom, supervising attorney at Boston College's Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, cited at least eight cases of wrongly deported citizens and said she expected the number was substantially higher.

One such case, detailed in an upcoming report by Rosenbloom's group, is the curious saga of Duarnis Perez. He is a native of the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen at 15 when his mother was naturalized. But he didn't know citizenship had been conferred on him as well. He assumed he was illegal, and so did everyone else.

Perez was deported and subsequently arrested trying to sneak back into the United States from Canada. He spent almost five years in prison for unlawful reentry. It was only upon his release in 2004 that an ICE official reviewed his file and informed Perez that he had been a citizen all along.

In Castillo's case, he was an infant when his mother left Belize and sought work in Los Angeles. She later became a nurse and sent for her son. Castillo attended elementary school in South-Central and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1996. He became a naturalized citizen in 1998. He joined the Army and served in Korea, then was posted to Ft. Lewis, Wash. He was honorably discharged in 2003.

After domestic disputes with a girlfriend, he was convicted in 2005 of felony harassment and violating a no-contact order, and was sent to Pierce County Jail in Washington state for eight months. He was in a holding area with inmates about to be released when a corrections officer held him back.

Castillo was handcuffed and whisked off in a van to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. A federal officer said records showed he was an illegal immigrant.

"Your records are wrong," Castillo said he replied. He said he told the officer that he was a citizen but that his naturalization certificate had never arrived. It was sent to the wrong address, he later learned.

Castillo went before an immigration judge, who appeared via video conference, a common procedure in the crowded immigration court system. Again, he claimed citizenship. The judge didn't believe him. He was ordered deported on Jan. 24, 2006.

The nonprofit Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a legal advocacy center based in Seattle, provided a lawyer to handle Castillo's appeal. The lawyer searched for Castillo's naturalization documents and records of his military service.

The Board of Immigration Appeals blocked Castillo's deportation, noting proof of his military service. A month later, he was released without further explanation. It turned out Castillo was the victim of a paperwork mix-up: His name was spelled wrong in immigration records. And he had been assigned more than one "alien number," causing further confusion.

Castillo, now 31, is still incredulous.

"If it had taken 30 days to figure it out, I wouldn't be upset. But seven months?" he said in an interview.

He, like Guzman and others with similar experiences, has filed suit against the ICE.

"I want them to recognize they made a mistake," Castillo said. "Something needs to change. If it can happen to me, it's going to happen to someone else."

patrick.mcdonnell@ latimes.com

abecker@cironline.org

This story was reported and written in collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, a nonprofit news organization. Andrew Becker is a CIR staff reporter. Patrick J. McDonnell is a Times staff writer.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 6253.story

This is an easy problem to avoid.

I carry my passport card in my wallet
along with my drivers license
and my voter registration card.
I speak English and obey U.S. immigration laws.

There's always nitpickers, isn't there?
They overlook the tons of dangerous narcotics that our border agents routinely seize--that would cause death and mayhem in our local communities.

Thank You, ICE!

This is an unfortunate screw-up but he's a naturalized citizen which requires paperwork and the responsibility for the accuracy of that paperwork is as much theirs as our government in my opinion. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did but the article doesn't explain what his other legal problems were that may have contributed to the delay in processing his clearance either, does it?

He also wasn't picked up in a work force raid either. He was picked up for feloniously harassing an ex-girlfriend that he was convicted of and served 8 months in prison for.

They need to blame the Illegals and the pro- illegal lobby for their problems , not enforcement of law .

I think that we could resolve much of the expense of running and maintaining our jails if we put all of our jailed legal citizen criminals in airplanes and parachute them to Mexico..........it seems like a fair exchange, they have given us their criminals ( 12-40 million of them, in fact) and we can given them ours...................

And too, when our criminals get situated in Mexico, they can march in the streets of Mexico and demand full rights of Mexican citizens without paying any taxes..........and our criminals must speak only English.....and work under the table and send their pay checks back to America. Oh yes, our criminals must bring in drugs to sell, form sadistic gangs and cartels, and bring in incurable and contagious diseases..........so the exchange is really equal...............and too, our criminals must make sure to impregnate others criminals so that the criminal couples have at least 20 children per criminal family.

Mexico is in a economic Depression so I am sure that they will give our criminals a warm and inviting welcome...just as Alipac'ers and others give the criminal illegals they dumped on our country a warm and inviting welcome..........oh, wait, I mean Obama and his communist buddies have extended this welcome..............NOT the American people!

The very premise of this argument is ridiculous because to assume the argument is valid would suggest that we live in a perfect world where mistakes aren't made. It's the nature of the beast for innocents to occasionally be caught up in law enforcement actions. Moreover, the numbers are so small that the majority of the American public accepts the risk as opposed to supporting no law enforcement action at all.

Exactly, MW. There are innocent US citizens convicted of crimes, sent to priso for decades, even Death Row. No one wants this, but it happens and we don't stop enforcing the law because it does. We just work on avoiding the mistake in the future.

Each one of us is responsible for carrying valid ID, there are no excuses.
If you lack the ID, it is YOUR fault and your burden to prove.

In most Latin American countries, citizens are required to carry a National ID card at all times. Coming from Latin America and knowing this, it's a habit I've never broken. I carry a copy of my naturalization paper with me at all times.

"Your records are wrong," Castillo said he replied. He said he told the officer that he was a citizen but that his naturalization certificate had never arrived. It was sent to the wrong address, he later learned.

If he hadn't treated his naturalization certificate like junk mail, and followed up on it when it never arrived, and showed at least a small amount of interest in becoming a naturalized citizen, this never would have happened.
If he didn't harrass women like they were his property, he never would have gone to jail and this never would have happened.