U.S. Deports Louisiana-Born Citizen

by Dave Bennion

categories: Immigration Detention, Immigration Reform

Published June 15, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT

Despite her birth in Louisiana, Diane Williams was recently deported to Honduras by the U.S. government. It's hard to tell exactly why, except that she looks Latina and had inadequate representation in immigration court. Apparently that was enough for ICE and the immigration judge.

It seems that once every couple of weeks, another story of mistaken deportation hits the papers.  It’s likely there’ll be no shortage of these stories as long as ICE and the immigration courts refuse to implement workable policies to screen citizens out of the deportation/detention system.  Citizen deportations may even rise with the implementation of the InSecure Communities initiative, which will funnel more people arrested on minor charges into the immigration detention system.

Until those policies change, citizens convicted of crimes who speak without an American accent or have brown skin had better familiarize themselves with the immigration legal system.  Their stay in the U.S. might depend on it.

From the Louisiana Daily Comet:

Williams is a short woman of Caucasian and American Indian descent with a thick south Louisiana accent.

She claims to only know a few words of Spanish and quit school in sixth grade. After initially refusing, she says she was pressured by agents into signing a document that waived her right to apply for a judicial review of her case.

According to that document, provided by her lawyer, Williams also failed to contest her "deportability."

"They didn't read nothing to me. They just told me to sign," she said, adding that she was threatened with years of jail time to be followed by deportation. "I was scared."

. . .

Williams was prescribed medication for epilepsy and insomnia, the anti-depressant Zoloft and Seroquel, a mood stabilizer used to treat bipolar disorder.

Of the thousands of people detained by immigration officials every year, some are mentally disabled, disturbed or otherwise not in a position to be an effective advocate for themselves.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no authority over U.S. citizens, meaning figuring out who it has in custody should be the agency's first concern, Rosenbloom said.

"The burden of proof is always on the government," Rosenbloom said. "It's extremely easy in most cases to find out whether someone is a U.S. citizen."

Nationwide numbers on the prevalence of U.S. citizens getting deported are hard to come by.

"When ICE makes a mistake, it deports that mistake," Rosenbloom said, though she added U.S. citizens are detained by ICE every day. "There are many cases where these mistakes never come to light."

Jorge Baron, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle, said his group has documented 21 cases in the past three years of U.S. citizens who were detained by ICE. Part of the problem, he said, is a lack of access to attorneys, since the government is not obligated to provide free legal counsel.

"In 2008, 90 percent of people who had cases heard did not have private attorneys," he said, adding that his group attempts to screen cases for "meritorious claims" to U.S. citizenship. "We're talking about thousands of people each year. ... If you don't have access to someone who can investigate your case and figure it out, it's very difficult."

Under pressure to show results, agents also are pushed to deport people quickly, he said.

"The system is set up so there's this pressure on everybody to cut corners," he said. "We hear from our clients that they do get pressured into signing documents."

Limiting the number of expedited deportation proceedings allowed and increasing access to legal counsel could prevent such mishaps, Rosenbloom added.

"There is something deeply wrong with a system that deports someone on the basis of a statement made under coercion without the presence of an attorney with no verification that it is true," Rosenbloom said. "Our tax dollars are not meant to be spent deporting someone who's a U.S. citizen."

(Via BIB)