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Article 16-23
¡No Se Deje!
One of the many benefits of obtaining U. S. citizenship is that citizens cannot LEGALLY be deported. Once you are a citizen, even if you are convicted of committing a deportable crime, you cannot be deported. As a naturalized citizen, you have all of the benefits of a natural born citizen except serving as President of the United States. The government can invalidate your citizenship if it can prove that you lied or committed fraud in your immigration or citizenship applications. If your citizenship is invalidated, you can then be deported.
Although citizens, even naturalized citizens cannot be LEGALLY deported, there have been many documented cases of citizens that have been unlawfully deported. Most of the victims of the most recent unlawful deportations have been Latinos, mostly Mexicans. Not long ago, I reported the case of Pedro Guzman, a U. S. born Mexican American that was unlawfully deported to Tijuana and spent over three months living on the streets and eating out of garbage cans while trying repeatedly to re-enter the country of his birth, the United States of America. Although he had repeatedly told U. S. authorities that he was a citizen, he was deported. The authorities insist that Mr. Guzman told them that he had been born in Mexico. This is simply unbelievable. Why would a person born in this country, and who had lived here all of his life, and who is not fluent in Spanish, tell immigration authorities that he was born in Mexico? He was finally able to return after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on his behalf.
Several major newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times and others have published articles revealing many cases of unlawful deportation of U. S. citizens. Kara Hartzler, a former attorney with the Florence Immigration and Refugee Rights Project testified about unlawful deportation of U. S. citizens at Congressional hearings in Washington, D. C. She testified that “The deportation of U. S. citizens is not happening monthly, or weekly, but every day.” It has been estimated that since 2004, Immigration authorities have wrongly detained between 3,500 and 10,000 U. S. citizens and unlawfully deported approximately half of them.
Most of the unlawfully deported citizens describe the same shameful experience. They insist and repeat over and over to the authorities that they are U. S. citizens. Their declarations are not believed and/or ignored. No attempt is made to verify the veracity of their claims to U. S. citizenship and they are ultimately deported. Few of these victims are as fortunate as Pedro Guzman who was able to receive the legal assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union. Most of the victims do not have legal assistance or the money to hire an attorney so they are deported and then spend months or years trying to re-enter their country of birth.
American Civil Liberties attorneys filed a lawsuit against the Federal government for unlawfully deporting Pedro Guzman. Any U. S. citizen that is unlawfully deported should hire an attorney to file an appropriate lawsuit. ¡NO SE DEJE! ®
Jess J. Araujo, Esq.