A US citizen spent 3,5 of the year in prison due to an error by the migration police

Photo: twitter / @ icegov

The appeals court found that the feds were not responsible for keeping a US citizen in prison for three years because of the mistaken claim that he was not an American.

Devino Watson spent the day behind bars in 1, because the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Compliance did not confirm that a Jamaican citizen was naturalized in 273. ICE officers detained Watson after he ended an eight-month prison sentence for selling cocaine.

In the immigration court, Watson was not provided with a lawyer, so he wrote a letter to immigration officers, attached a certificate of naturalization to his father, and continued to repeat his status to anyone who listened to him.

However, he was held in prison for almost 3,5 years as a foreigner, subject to deportation. Then a New Yorker was released from jail in Alabama without money and did not provide any explanation. The deportation process continued for another year.

Watson was right all the time: he was a US citizen. After his release, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $ 82 500 for damage, citing "the government's sad failures."

On Monday, the appeals court ruled that Watson, who is now 32, is not eligible to receive this money, because the limitation period had actually expired while he was still in detention without a lawyer.

2 US District Court of Appeal recognized that the ruling was “harsh”, but stated that it was related to precedent.

“There is no doubt that the government pursued Watson's citizenship case and that, as a result, the U.S. citizen was held in immigration detention for years and was nearly deported,” the court said. “However, we must conclude that Watson is not entitled to damages from the government.”

"Legal Disaster"

The details of the case are “classified”, district judge Jack Weinstein said last year in his decision. Watson was born in Jamaica and moved with his father to the United States as a teenager. He was 17 years old when his father was naturalized in 2002, so he became a US citizen the same day.

In 2007, Watson pleaded guilty to selling cocaine. When his sentence ended in May 2008, he was arrested by ICE officers.
Watson had already told them that he was a citizen, and gave them the names of his father and stepmother and the phone number to call and confirm his words.

ICE employees did not call this number. They tried to find his father, Hopeton Ulando Watson, but they confused him with Hopeton Livingston Watson.

Hopeton Livingston Watson was not a US citizen. He also lived in Connecticut instead of New York, did not have a son named Devino, and arrived in the United States at another time. But the officers apparently did not notice the mistakes. Based on the wrong file, they concluded that Watson was not a citizen, and began the process of deportation.

Many years passed when Devino Watson, being detained, tried to fight deportation. He was imprisoned until November 2011.

"An entire legal disaster" could have been avoided if Watson had had an attorney from the start, wrote the district judge who ordered the settlement. With an attorney, "Plaintiff would likely have been immediately declared a citizen and released almost immediately upon his arrest," he said.

Then, after his arrest, the government's investigation into his status would be considered a "senseless failure" and "inattention," Weinstein said.

"ICE did not follow its own procedures in what to do when a detained immigrant makes a claim for U.S. citizenship," says Flessner, the lawyer now working on Watson's case, NPR reports.

Now Watson will apply to the US Supreme Court to restore his right to compensation.

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