Based on the protocols established by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) a developmentally disabled man who lived with his mother was deported to Mexico despite his US citizenship. Guess what his name and how he looked had to do with the reason he was deported?

ACLU spokesman Michael Soller said 29-year-old Pedro Guzman was serving a 120-day sentence in a Los Angeles jail for trespassing when he was deported to Tijuana, Mexico, on May 10 or May 11 for an alleged immigration violation.

The group’s suit filed in U.S. District Court seeks to have the deportation order suspended and for the U.S. government to help locate Guzman.

Guzman, who was born in Los Angeles and lived about 70 miles north in Lancaster with his mother, could barely read and write, Soller said. He did not know his phone number and kept his brother’s telephone number on a piece of paper.

But the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in a written statement denied Guzman’s deportation, which followed immigration checks at the jail, was improper.

“ICE only processes persons for removal when all available credible evidence suggests the person is an alien,” ICE officials said. “That process was followed here and ICE has no reason to believe that it improperly removed Pedro Guzman.”

How many other Pedro Guzmans are out there? How low do we have to sink before we accept the fact that our government’s immigration policy is based almost entirely upon racism and bigotry? “All the credible evidence” here suggested was that this was a man who was a Latino, and a developmentally disabled man, nothing more. Yet apparently looking like a Mexican, and answering to the name of “Pedro” was all the evidence that was necessary for a US citizen to lose his civil rights and be shipped off to another country where he likely knew not a single person. No one.

(cont.)

UPDATE below the fold

The only telephone call Guzman made came shortly after his deportation, on May 11 and was received by his sister in law, Soller said.

“The last thing she heard him do was ask someone nearby ‘Where am I?’ and then the line went dead,” Soller said. Guzman has not been heard from since and is assumed lost in Mexico.

Members of Guzman’s family, including his mother, brother and sister in law, have traveled to Tijuana and searched shelters, jails and hospitals trying to find him.

“We’re asking the U.S. government to take responsibility for finding him,” Soller said. “The family just wants him back.”

In all likelihood, Pedro Guzman is either dead or soon will be, and our “immigration enforcement process” is the ultimate cause of that horrific result. I hope that Mr. Guzman can still be found, and that his mother can be reunited with her son. But make no mistake: this is a tragedy that didn’t have to happen.

The only explanation for why it did happen is that ICE has been told to kick “Mexicans” out of the country “any which way you can” by the Bush administration. Why? In order to benefit Republican politicians who seek to profit politically from ramping up xenophobia in this country, especially against immigrants from Latin America. It’s shameful and disgusting that no one at ICE or in the Los Angeles penal system bothered to verify Mr. Guzman’s identity as a US citizen before they shipped him out and dumped him on the streets of Tijuana. It’s even more shameful that an anonymous ICE spinmeister defended what was unlawfully done to Pedro Guzman by his government.

But that’s our Bush, isn’t it? “Compassionate Conservatism” at its best. Which means the absence of any. Compassion, that is. Or justice.













Update [2007-6-12 16:48:14 by Steven D]: Link to AP story (blurb really) which refers to Pedro Guzman’s signature on a “paper” permitting the ICE to deport him.

The family of a mentally disabled man has filed suit claiming federal and Los Angeles County officials mistakenly had an American citizen deported. The suit says U-S officials should help find him in Mexico. His brother says Pedro Guzman, who can’t read, signed a paper allowing himself to be deported.

Hat tip to mariachi mama.