Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. Immigration Officials Held U.S. Citizen For Two Weeks

Anna Gorman writes in The Los Angeles Times:

Federal authorities have released a Los Angeles man from immigration detention after acknowledging that he is a U.S. citizen.

Guillermo Olivares Romero, 25, was held at an Otay Mesa detention center from Sept. 25 until Oct. 9, when an American Civil Liberties Union attorney presented his birth certificate, school and vaccination records to immigration authorities. He was released that day.

Olivares, who has criminal convictions for robbery and forgery, had been deported twice and denied entry into the United States multiple times. Olivares said he and his mother, a legal permanent resident, showed authorities his birth certificate many times.

"They didn't believe me," Olivares, from Los Angeles, said Friday. "There was nothing I could do."

But Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said Friday that Olivares said he was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. Olivares' statewide criminal rap sheet also shows that he was born in Mexico, Kice said.

"ICE would never knowingly remove or voluntarily return an individual who is a U.S. citizen," she said.

Right. See here and here for escalations in terminology. -ferg

More here.

posted by Fergie @ 10/27/2008 10:28:00 PM