"We have to be careful we don't release the wrong person"
Hence, we imprison and deport American citizens for immigration violations.
McClatchyThomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.
During a deportation hearing Thursday morning, pleas by Warziniack's family and lawyer to release him, as well as a copy of his birth certificate proving his citizenship, did little to deter the government.
"The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes," Warziniack said in a phone interview from jail. "All I know is that somebody dropped the ball."
The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens.
The whole article (which is a must read) makes The Trial seem like a due process Shangri-La by comparison.
The title quote, BTW, is from Ernestine Fobbs, whom McClatchy describes as a spokeswoman for "ICE, the federal agency that oversees deportations".
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Comments
Please provide a link so I can read the article referenced in your post.
thank you
Posted by: beri | January 25, 2008 8:02 AM
@Beri
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/25392.html
(The 'McClatchy' after the block quote is a hyperlink inside tags. Sorry this wasn't as clear as I thought)
Posted by: Chris | January 25, 2008 9:35 AM
Wow, this this for real? I thought that entering us for non-citizens is sometimes a hassle, but this!!!???
Posted by: Anton Chuvakin | January 25, 2008 1:06 PM
Wow, is this for real? I thought that entering us for non-citizens is sometimes a hassle, but this!!!???
Posted by: Anton Chuvakin | January 25, 2008 1:06 PM
I find it incredibly evil that the government choses to believe the guy when he is stoned out of his mind on heroin, but intentionally choses to ignore him when he is sober and has supporting documentation.
Posted by: Peter | January 27, 2008 2:30 PM
Geez, you'd almost think all those nasty things Americans were willing to see done to Arabs in the name of the War on Terror were beginning to be done to Americans, too. Who could possibly have forseen such an event?
Posted by: albatross | February 1, 2008 2:38 PM
Was he a war protestor? I hear this happens to people, in fact, it is hard to find. But that is because the media doesn't put 2 and 2 2gether.
Watch for more stories, of police "mistakes" and then google their names + protest
Posted by: jrk | February 2, 2008 8:56 AM