Mother searches Tijuana for mentally disabled man ... illegally deported

Source: Brainerd (MN) Dispatch

Clutching a photo of her son, Maria Carvajal walks Tijuana's sweltering streets searching for the mentally disabled man she says was deported more than a month ago despite being a U.S. citizen and then disappeared in this chaotic border city.

Carvajal says she has searched hospitals, shelters and jails here looking for her 29-year-old son, Pedro Guzman of Lancaster, California, who was jailed for a misdemeanor trespassing violation, then sent to Mexico on May 11.

Guzman's relatives sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department last week in federal court, claiming Guzman was a U.S. citizen and had been wrongfully deported and demanding that U.S. authorities help find him.

"I'm searching for him because he's my son. But it should be (U.S. authorities) searching for him," Carvajal, a 49-year-old fast-food restaurant worker from Lancaster, said Sunday in Tijuana. "They made the mistake. Not me."



Read more: http://ap.brainerddispatch.com/pstories/world/latin_america/20070617/178242186.shtml

:kick:

Source: Associated Press

Mom says disabled son illegally deported
By LUIS PEREZ, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 37 minutes ago

TIJUANA, Mexico - Clutching a photo of her son, Maria Carvajal walks Tijuana's sweltering streets searching for the mentally disabled man she says was deported more than a month ago despite being a U.S. citizen and then disappeared in this chaotic border city.

Carvajal says she has searched hospitals, shelters and jails here looking for her 29-year-old son, Pedro Guzman of Lancaster, California, who was jailed for a misdemeanor trespassing violation, then sent to Mexico on May 11.

Guzman's relatives sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department last week in federal court, claiming Guzman was a U.S. citizen and had been wrongfully deported and demanding that U.S. authorities help find him.

"I'm searching for him because he's my son. But it should be (U.S. authorities) searching for him," Carvajal, a 49-year-old fast-food restaurant worker from Lancaster, said Sunday in Tijuana. "They made the mistake. Not me."


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070618/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_wrongful_deportation

:sarcasm:

That poor woman.

Deported man was actually U.S. citizen
Posted 8/23/2006 8:26 AM ET

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Duarnis Perez became an American citizen when he was 15, but he didn't find out until after he had been deported and then jailed for trying to get back into the country.

He was facing his second deportation hearing when he learned he was already a U.S. citizen. Still, federal prosecutors fought to keep him in custody.

Last week, a federal judge scolded prosecutors for the mistake.

"In effect, the government is arguing that an innocent man who was wrongly convicted should not be released from the custody of the United States," U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn wrote. He ruled that Perez never should have been deported. ~snip~

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-23-citizenship-surprise_x.htm

April 26, 2006
News
They Could Be Citizens and They Might Be Deported
The government has jailed family-supporting, lifelong U.S. residents who seem as American as the next person—but can't prove it.
By Nina Shapiro

~snip~ Julio and Charlotte Gonzalez, whose marriage certificate was signed 21 years ago at the Precious Memories chapel in Huntington Park, Calif., are up against a challenge of Kafkaesque proportions. Julio's late mother was an American citizen, according to the Gonzalezes and a copy of a birth certificate documenting the arrival of baby Raquel Sandoval in Santa Fe, N.M., on April 4, 1934. Her parents were born in New Mexico, Julio says. Julio's father was a legal resident who worked at a chroming factory for 25 years in Arizona, where he died. Julio's wife is an American citizen, with a California birth certificate to prove it. Julio and Charlotte have four children, ranging in age from 24 to 16, all born in the U.S.

Julio has lived in this country since he was a baby, he says. Before he was born, however, his mother spent some time in Mexico, where she delivered Julio, one of her 10 children, most of whom were born in the U.S. She returned to this country in time to give Julio memories of waking up from naps and being fed orange juice and peanut butter crackers in a Los Angeles kindergarten. ~snip~

Immigration law consists of statutes that are not intuitive. "It gets complicated," says Gary Garman, who works out of the Tacoma detention center as the assistant field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for investigating and deporting illegal immigrants. "Most Americans have no knowledge of it." Even figuring out whether someone is a citizen or not can be tricky. Asked about Julio Gonzalez, Garman says he can't discuss specific cases but pulls out reference material. Garman discovers that if a baby is born today to an American citizen outside the country, that baby is automatically an American citizen. But because Julio was born between 1952 and 1986, he is only an American citizen if one parent was a citizen and was physically present in the U.S. for 10 years, five of which occurred after the parent was 14. ~snip~

Flipping through documents, Molloy indicates that he is not satisfied. He announces the rule that requires Gonzalez to document his mother's presence in the U.S. for 10 years, including five years after she was 14. The judge sets a date for another hearing and advises him to bring relevant documents and witnesses. ~snip~

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2006-04-26/news/they-could-be-citizens-and-they-might-be-deported.php

Citizenship fight leaves migrant jailed, bewildered
The Houston Chronicle (Houston, TX), Nov 24, 2003 p. 01
By: Dale Lezon; Carlos Antonio Rios.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspapers Partnership, LP

For years, Juan Gabriel Zavala crossed the border into Texas at Matamoros with ease. Claiming he was a U.S. citizen, he'd show border guards a tattered U.S. birth certificate to gain entry. He would come to Houston to mow lawns and live in crowded apartments in Spring Branch, and he would send money to his ailing mother in Mexico.

His good luck ran out Oct. 17. He was arrested for immigration violations when he applied for a U.S. passport and was jailed at the immigration lockup in Houston. Now, he faces deportation unless he can prove he was born in the United States. ~snip~

He regularly would visit his mother in Mexico and then would return to Spring Branch, using his U.S. birth certificate as identification to cross the border at Matamoros, he said. But in 1998, when he presented his birth certificate at the border on his way back to Houston, U.S. immigration officers claimed it was false. They said Zavala told them that he was not a U.S. citizen and they confiscated the birth certificate and deported him. They barred him from entering the country for five years. ~snip~

http://www.uniset.ca/naty/maternity/hc_zavala.htm

I hope his poor mum, when she is not working in a fast food outlet, can find some way out this nightmare.

Poor woman...

they deported a US citizen to Mexico. Mexico should deport him back.

This guy was exiled for a misdemeanor. This is racist insanity.

Haven't you heard about Lou Dobbs' Mexican wife?

:sarcasm:

Mr. O'Keefe runs a stop sign -- bingo! plane ride to Ireland
Mr. D'Angelo talks on a cell phone while driving -- next stop Italy
Arnold Swartzenegger smokes a stogie in the wrong room -- deported to Austria.

I crossed the southern border from Belize into Mexico three years ago--I felt like I was at Checkpoint Charlie in a divided Berlin.

Well, at least it was someone with a foreign-sounding name like Pedro. What if the deportee was named Jordan or Brittany?

Direct to Tijuana...

No worries. In addition to being mentally disabled, statistics (sic) suggest that Mr. Guzman probably also had leprosy, and we don't want that.

We're becoming the Home of the Freep, land of the Brash.