ImmigrationChild in immigrant detention facility discovered to be U.S. citizen
In Tuscon, Arizona an 11-year-old boy — just one of the hundreds of children that have been detained at a detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico — was released because he was discovered by his attorney to be a U.S. citizen. The case has highlighted the hazards and potential mistakes that can befall DHS and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials when they choose to “fast-track” immigration cases.
In Tuscon, Arizona an 11-year-old boy — just one of the hundreds of children that have been detained at a detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico — was released because he was discovered by his attorney to be a U.S. citizen. The incident is gaining attention as a case of mishandled legal procedure, the result of the willingness to rush immigration cases due to the overwhelming number of immigrants arriving from Central America (63,000 single parents with at least one child within the past nine months).
As the Standard-Times reports, the child was at the facility for more than thirty days before an immigration attorney discovered his background. The boy’s father is a U.S. citizen, and the mother, along with the boy, was traveling into the country from Central America.
Stephen Manning, the attorney for the boy, told the paper, “I don’t think they (border patrol) asked him the right questions. He should never have been there.”
Leticia Zamarripa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responded that the case was “a complex matter.”
The case has highlighted the hazards and potential mistakes that can befall DHS and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials when they choose to “fast-track” immigration cases.
Laura Lichter, a lawyer offering free counsel to many of the detainees at the Artesia facility, said: “I think the fact that a U.S. citizen was detained and for this long before anyone actually realized that there was even the possibility that they had detained a U.S. citizen shows you just how little respect and attention is being given to people’s cases. What this shows you is that there really is no due process here and that the system is only working in a way to deport people from the country. It is not working to protect people’s claims.”
Manning added that because the boy’s father is a U.S. citizen, the child is too, even though he was not born in the United States. The boy and mother are to be reunited with their family.
The mother’s status is not yet clear.
