By way of Discourse.net, we read of this unfortunate gentleman, an American citizen detained by ICE, who refused to believe that he was a citizen:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.
On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from McClatchy, produced a birth certificate and after a U.S. senator demanded his release.
"The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes," Warziniack said in an earlier phone interview from jail. "All I know is that somebody dropped the ball."
Oh, sure, that shit sounds all funny like "Born in East L.A." but it's the inevitable result of a two-tiered system, where one tier of the system basically doesn't allow for much in the way of rights for the individual.
A worse problem is that under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 we now have another, even more pernicious two-tier system. If you're accused of "materially supporting" "hostilities" against the US or someone on the US's side and believed not to be a citizen, you have no right to challenge your indefinite detention (including on the grounds that you're actually a citizen), and you'll wind up in a kangaroo court like those down in Gitmo, which will have the power to do a hell of a lot more than deport you.
On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from McClatchy, produced a birth certificate and after a U.S. senator demanded his release.
And if you don't have a reporter there to notify your family and a Senator to call for your release ...
Posted by: eRobin | Apr 07, 2008 at 09:28 PM