The Obama administration’s aggressive deportation program has resulted in a growing number of U.S. citizens being detained by authorities.

 

Americans arrested have gotten caught up in the controversial Secure Communities program, which checks the fingerprints of anyone who was ever been booked at a local jail and tells local police whether someone in their custody is in the country without authorization. The wrongful arrests have occurred because “flawed information from Department of Homeland Security databases instructed the police to hold them for investigation and possible deportation,” according to The New York Times.

 

Citizens taken to jails say police ignored their pleadings of innocence, leaving them to spend days in detention until authorities realized their mistakes. For example, in November Antonio Montejano of Los Angeles was arrested on a charge of shoplifting. After a judge ordered him to be released, he was kept in jail for two more days on suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant. Actually he was an American citizen born in Los Angeles. Back in 1996 he had been mistakenly detained while trying to return to the United States from Mexico. The incident had never been cleared from his record.

 

In FY 2011, 396,906 individuals were deported by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Three out of four of them were convicted criminals or repeat immigration violators.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Immigration Crackdown Also Snares Americans (by Julia Preston, New York Times)

Statement of Antonio Montejano, American Citizen Wrongly Detained Under S-Comm Nov. 30, 2011  (American Civil Liberties Union) (pdf)

Cases of Detained Citizens Emerge (by Alfonso Chardy, El Nuevo Herald)

Border Patrol Deported U.S.-Born Daughter of Fourth-Generation U.S. Citizen (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)