Local Authorities Jail Texas Woman as “Illegal Immigrant”
Just prior to the Labor Day holiday weekend, the Star-Telegram reported that Alicia Rodriguez, a Texas woman born in Dallas, was mistakenly jailed and held as an “illegal immigrant” by local authorities.
Alicia Rodriguez, an accountant and mother of three, has the same name and date of birth as a woman deported to Mexico three times.
“I was told I was waiting for an [immigration] officer or Border Patrol officer to interview me and then move me to another location. It was very scary,” the Mansfield woman said. [...]
“This is very unusual,” Arlington police spokeswoman Christy Gilfour said “We’re not aware of this having happened before. We do realize that this is unfortunate, and we do regret that we made an error.”
Gilfour said police overlooked fingerprints that would have shown Rodriguez was not the illegal immigrant.
It is stories like Rodriguez’s and Pedro Guzman, the developmentally challenged man that was mistakenly deported to Mexico where it took his family three months to find him, that make massive deportations incredibly risky and bad immigration policy. There is no room for error and these kinds civil rights violations of Americans would only increase exponentially.
Also, it is important to note that older and/or poorer Americans lack proper documentation like birth certificates. The government questioned the legal status of an elder in my family despite having been born and lived in New Mexico even before it achieved statehood in 1912.
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
Zorro
Just because a few citizens are caught up in immigration sweeps does not mean ICE and DHS should continue to increase raids and enforcement of our immigration laws. There are many innocent victims sitting in prison for crimes they did not commit but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying to pursue murderers and rapists because of that now does it?
We MUST remove people who have come here illegally and get back to promoting LEGAL immigration. Yes we need more INS agents, yes we need more Border Patrol, yes we need more funding for the INS. Instead of blasting the ICE raids you should be blasting Congress and this President for not funding and staffing the INS so that legal immigration can be handled more efficiently.
September 5, 2007
Zorro
I think we should apply Mexican immigration law to ours. See here for a detailed rundown of how Mexico treats its LEGAL immmigrants and ILLEGAL immigrants get treated even worse
http://www.pardonmyenglish.com.....e_for.html
September 5, 2007
Matt Ortega
Mass deportations of undocumented workers is not feasible. Period.
September 9, 2007
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