U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided prepared statements in response to questions from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for this article. Here are some excerpts:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes very seriously claims of U.S. citizens being improperly detained for immigration enforcement purposes. ICE processes an individual for removal only when all available information indicates that the individual is a foreign national. As a matter of law, the agency cannot assert its civil immigration enforcement authority to arrest and/or detain a United States citizen. …
In general, analyzing U.S. citizenship can often be very complex, relying on the individual’s reporting of their birth and immigration history, residency history, immigration status, marital status of one’s parents, and the ever-changing body of law that was in place at the time of one’s birth. This complexity means that some individuals don’t even know they are U.S. citizens until well after they are encountered by ICE. Moreover, ICE does not adjudicate U.S. citizenship. For this, we rely on the determinations made by [the Executive Office for Immigration Review.] Individuals have been removed by the agency based on their own consistent representations of alienage, and it has only come to light later, possibly after they reentered the United States surreptitiously, that they have a potential claim to U.S. citizenship.
Alone and afraid, Mark Lyttle wandered south of the U.S-Mexican border for four months, sleeping in the streets, shelters and jails of Central America before the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala helped return him home.
Lyttle — a U.S. citizen and Georgia resident with mental disabilities — began his perilous odyssey after the government mistakenly deported him to Mexico in 2008. His case is not unique.
Federal immigration authorities say they don’t keep statistics on this phenomenon, though they said such cases are “exceedingly rare.” But one expert said she has confirmed dozens of other instances in which the government has expelled U.S. citizens. And in February, a university-based research organization reported the government has issued more than 800 notices since fiscal year 2008 to potentially detain and deport U.S. citizens in error. What action was taken on those notices is unclear.
Supporters say several provisions in the immigration overhaul bill now pending in Congress could help prevent such mistakes. One section of the Senate bill would require the government to appoint attorneys for unaccompanied children, the mentally ill and people who are “particularly vulnerable” and who are facing deportation. Experts disagree about whether the legislation goes far enough.
Lyttle said his case would have turned out differently if the bill had been law. An attorney, he said, would have helped him get the paperwork he needed to prove he was born in North Carolina and is therefore a citizen.
Now 35, Lyttle said he suffers from frightening flashbacks of his time wandering penniless and hungry through Central America. Lyttle, who is diabetic and doesn’t speak Spanish, said he survived by scavenging food, collecting handouts and working odd construction-related jobs. Among his most terrifying memories is the time he said a law enforcement officer pointed an assault rifle at him at a jail in Honduras.
“I’m always going to have the thoughts of what was done to me,” Lyttle told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this month at his new home south of Atlanta. “I can be sitting back — in a daze — and still think I’m over there, like I’m still walking the streets over there.”
Lyttle, who is of Puerto Rican descent, sued in a federal district court in Atlanta, saying the government racially discriminated against him and violated his constitutional rights. The government denied his claims before settling with Lyttle for $175,000 in October. His 63-page court complaint tells a Kafkaesque story about what happened to him.
Lyttle has a bipolar disorder and significant learning disabilities and was institutionalized during his teenage years. He also has an extensive criminal record, court records show. In 2008, for example, he was convicted of assaulting a female orderly at a state-run psychiatric hospital in North Carolina where he was a patient. He was sentenced to serve 100 days in a state prison for the misdemeanor conviction.
It was there where federal immigration authorities questioned him. They inexplicably accused him of being an illegal immigrant from Mexico. Later, according to his lawsuit, they manipulated Lyttle into signing official forms, falsely acknowledging that he was a Mexican citizen named “Jose Thomas” and agreeing to be deported to Mexico. Lyttle said in court papers that he did not understand what he was signing.
The government held Lyttle for more than a month in an immigration detention center in Stewart County south of Atlanta, where he said he attempted to commit suicide. A federal immigration judge ultimately ordered his deportation, even though Lyttle said he repeatedly maintained he was a U.S. citizen. The government transported him to the Mexican border, where he was forced to set off on foot still wearing his green detention center uniform. Not knowing where he was and fearing the worst, his family began to search obituaries for him.
As he wandered for four months, authorities arrested and incarcerated Lyttle in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua on the grounds that he could not prove his identity or citizenship. Mexico deported him to Honduras, where he was held at an immigration camp and then a jail, court papers show. He often traveled on foot. Lyttle finally got help from a sympathetic official at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala. He told the embassy he was born in North Carolina and named his brothers, who serve in the U.S. military. The embassy quickly tracked down his family. Lyttle received a passport within 24 hours and was put on a flight to Atlanta.
Federal immigration authorities detained Lyttle when he arrived in Atlanta, court records show, and were preparing to deport him again until an attorney working with his family located him and demanded his release.
ICE issued a statement in response to questions about Lyttle’s case, saying it has since investigated the matter, confirmed his U.S. citizenship and corrected federal databases. Since Lyttle’s deportation in 2008, the government has started a toll-free 24-hour hot line for detainees who believe they are U.S. citizens. And in April, the government announced a new program that would make “qualified representatives” available to help detainees who are deemed mentally incompetent to represent themselves.
“ICE has implemented stringent safeguards to protect against the possibility that a U.S. citizen is detained or removed,” the agency said.
Federal authorities routinely seek to determine whether people have legal status in the U.S. by interviewing them and asking to see their identification. Further, people booked into local jails are fingerprinted. And those fingerprints are checked against federal databases, which contain millions of records, including ones for people who have applied for visas or who have been caught entering the country illegally.
The issue drew national attention in 2011, when the government deported a 15-year-old Texas girl to South America after she claimed to be an illegal immigrant. Jakadrien Turner, a runaway, repeatedly maintained she was born in Colombia and never said she was a U.S. citizen after Houston police arrested her for misdemeanor theft, ICE said.
Jacqueline Stevens, a political science professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, said she has documented 40 cases in which the government has mistakenly deported U.S. citizens since 2003, including Turner and Lyttle. Some who signed their own deportation orders were mentally ill or were initially unaware of their U.S. citizenship, said Stevens, who directs the Deportation Research Clinic at Northwestern. She said others signed the documents under pressure from federal immigration authorities who threatened criminal arrest and detention.
Extrapolating from her research, Stevens estimated that 1 percent of everyone the government detains and seeks to deport each year — or about 4,000 people — are U.S. citizens.
Stevens highlighted the case of the late Johann “Ace” Francis, who derived U.S. citizenship as a teenager through his mother, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Jamaica. The government deported Francis to Jamaica after his assault conviction in 1999. He wasn’t able to get the documents he needed to return to the U.S. and reunite with his family in Atlanta until about 10 years later, Stevens said. His mother said Francis died from cancer in January.
In February, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization at Syracuse University, reported that the government issued 834 immigration detainers for U.S. citizens between fiscal years 2008 and 2012. At least 11 were in Georgia. The report does not detail the outcome of those detainers.
ICE routinely sends these detainers to local jails and state prisons, asking them to notify the federal agency before releasing certain people. The detainers allow jails and prisons to hold people for an additional 48 hours — excluding weekends and holidays — after they would otherwise be released. This gives ICE time to take custody of them and attempt to deport them.
ICE disputed TRAC’s data but could not provide its own statistics. The federal agency highlighted how in 2011 it announced new measures to ensure people who are the targets of these detainers are notified of their legal rights and the possibility they could be deported.
Stevens, who is writing a book about U.S. citizens who have been deported, said the safeguards offered by the government and the new ones included in the Senate legislation don’t go far enough. She said all people who are facing deportation and who cannot afford attorneys should be given access to government-appointed lawyers.
Peter Nunez, chairman of the board for the Center for Immigration Studies — which advocates admitting fewer immigrants — criticized that idea, estimating it could cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
“Not every situation in life is one that requires the government — the taxpayer — to pay for a lawyer for every harm that is taking place or every issue that needs to be litigated,” said Nunez, a former federal prosecutor who teaches immigration policy at the University of San Diego.
Meanwhile, Lyttle has achieved some normalcy since his harrowing journey in 2008. He got married last year. His wife, Sherry, describes Lyttle as the “best thing that has ever happened to me.”
A few months ago, Lyttle bought a fixer-upper in a quiet, leafy neighborhood a short walk from Griffin High School. It’s a small ranch house with cream-colored shutters. Children’s Spider-Man and Barbie bicycles sit in the yard. They belong to his wife’s grandchildren. Sherry said Lyttle adores them.
Lyttle recently took some visitors on a tour of his home, proudly showing off the growing baseball cap collection in his office. He also collects paintings of lions, highlighting that he was born on Aug. 2 and is therefore a Leo. He seemed pleasantly surprised by his new life. Still, the nightmares haven’t gone away.
“I have a gun pointed at my face,” he said of one of his recurring dreams. “Or I have got one of the people talking a language I don’t understand — and very aware I don’t understand it.”
His mother, Jeanne, said Lyttle has been uptight and jumpy since he returned from Central America. Sherry said he is a light sleeper, stirring in their ornate canopy bed at the slightest sound.
Lyttle said he never wants to travel outside the U.S. again. He flipped open his wallet and displayed his Georgia photo I.D. and Social Security cards. He said he carries them every time he leaves his home. Just in case.
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