The immigration police mistakenly detained one and a half thousand Americans

Agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) repeatedly mistakenly detained US citizens, mistaking them for illegal immigrants to be deported.

Photo: twitter / ICE.gov

The reasons for such errors are mainly inaccuracies in government databases and inaccurate investigations. LA Times.

According to official data, since 2012, ICE released more than 1480 people from custody after it turned out that they had US citizenship. Often, the process of confirming citizenship takes a long time and can even go to trial.

Wrongful arrests make up a small part of the total number of detentions conducted by ICE, their average number reaching 100 000 every year. Most often, the victims of mistakes are the children of immigrants and citizens born outside the United States.

How do errors occur

When any person is arrested in the United States, his data and fingerprints are transferred to the FBI and automatically compared with the data of millions of illegal immigrants in the databases of the Department of Homeland Security. If the data matches, the person is arrested for the purpose of deportation. In addition, immigration raid lists are taken from the same databases.

But as practice has shown, there are not always fingerprints, often just first and last names, in which typos sometimes come across, and the officers have become accustomed to this. Therefore, the difference in one or two letters in the names of an American citizen and an illegal immigrant automatically puts the citizen at risk, especially if he is detained for another reason.

The provision of a US passport or other documents by ICE officers is often ignored because the documents can be forged. According to Americans who are victims of erroneous arrests, immigration officers are very reluctant to check the accuracy of the information specified in the data of the Department of National Security.

Presumption of lies

The ICE leadership has repeatedly asked agents to avoid erroneous arrests and to take the detainees' claims that they are American citizens seriously, such allegations must be investigated within 48 hours after the arrest. However, in most cases, agents decide that the arrested person is lying, and if he was born outside the US or in a family of immigrants who acquired citizenship after his birth, then the cases are often delayed and go to court, where the arrested person has to prove that he has American citizenship.

And agents are difficult to blame, because illegal immigrants often falsely claim to have US citizenship, and even provide documents. Therefore, to understand the veracity of such statements is quite difficult.

Since 2012, 8 people arrested by immigration agents have claimed to be U.S. citizens, but only 043 claims have been true—less than 1488%.

Error priced in 3,5 year of life

Sometimes cases of erroneous arrests are especially glaring.

ICE agents detained Jamaica-born Devino Watson immediately after being released from New York State Prison, where he was serving a sentence for drug-related charges.

When asked about his immigration status, Watson replied that he is a US citizen who obtained citizenship through his father, who went through the naturalization process when Devino was a child. An agent was trying to find Watson's father in immigration databases, but found the wrong person. Instead of Hopeton, Ulando Watson, who lived in New York, the agent chose Hopeton Livingston Watson, a man living in Connecticut and not having US citizenship.

This mistake cost Devino 3,5 years of life. Even after ICE discovered a mistake, the federal authorities refused to release Watson. They argued that Watson should be deported because his father was not his legal guardian at the time they left Jamaica.

Watson did not have a lawyer, he defended himself as best he could, but the judge decided on his deportation, the appeals instance supported this decision.

It was only when Watson’s appeal came to the US District Court, and a court-appointed lawyer proved that government lawyers misinterpreted one aspect of immigration law, and that Jamaican custody did not play a role in this matter, the man was released.

Read also on ForumDaily:

How ICE Agents Reach Denaturalization

ICE told how illegal immigrants are deported and how much it costs

One-way ticket: how illegal immigrants are deported from the US

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