A Texas-born U.S. citizen who was detained, questioned and deported to Matamoros, Mexico, in the middle of the night has been allowed to re-enter the United States, ending a nearly three-month ordeal.Read the rest here.
Luis Alberto Delgado, 19, was carrying his American birth certificate, Social Security card and Texas ID when he was pulled over in a routine traffic stop on June 17, according to Houston immigration lawyer Isaias Torres, who represented him in his legal battle for repatriation.
A South Texas sheriff’s deputy who apparently believed the documents were not authentic handed Delgado over to U.S. border agents. After eight hours of questioning, Torres said, Delgado felt pressured to sign a document agreeing to voluntary removal from the country and waiving his right to a lawyer. The Border Patrol then drove Delgado to Matamoros and left him, he said.
He was finally able to return home over the weekend, Torres said.
I see a large check in this young man's future.
For his sake, I hope he gets that large check!
ReplyDeleteAnd they say Arizona's law won't lead to racial profiling?
It appears the arrest took place in Texas and the screw-up was due to US Border Patrol authorities, not Arizona law enforcement.
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting that this US citizen is apparently incapable of speaking or writing in English, which is understandable given that his parenting and upbringing is, basically, Mexican.
In sum, he is a Mexican who happens to have US citizenship, which is all being an American means at this point: an administrative designation.
I am aware that the incident did not take place in Arizona.
ReplyDeleteI brought it up because this case appears to be a precedent for racial profiling being used to enforce immigration laws, thus giving more credence to the arguments of those who say that the Arizona law will lead to racial profiling.
Why should he be considered less American because he doesn't speak much English? Plenty of people around the world don't speak the dominant or official languages of whatever countries they live in. I remember hearing about an American court case involving a woman from Guatemala who didn't speak English. An incidental aspect of the case was that the court helpfully provided a Spanish translator. However, it turned out that the poor woman didn't know Spanish, either. She was actually a member of an indigenous community in Guatemala and spoke K'iche'.
If you were to move to another country and strive to become its loyal citizen, what would be the minimum you should do? I would say learn the lingua franca and outmarry into the market-dominant ethnicity. Anything less, and I would say you're a citizen only in an abstract, technical sense.
ReplyDeleteAnything less, and I would say you're a citizen only in an abstract, technical sense.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Constitution makes that distinction. And the last time I checked such is still the supreme law of the land. The man either is a citizen or he is not. Under the law and the Constitution the answer is clearly that he is, and was at the time of the incident. As a free man in a supposedly free country what language he speaks is his business, and no one has the right to arbitrarily strip of his rights because of his lack of English. If the government is gong to deport someone they have an obligation to be sue that the person is not a US citizen.
Exactly where do you derive the right to strip someone of their rights because their background doesn't meet your standards? Frankly this know nothing nativism is repulsive.
Let,s give you the benefit of the doubt and say you are 100% correct legally. The point remains, he is only my countryman in a highly abstract sense.
ReplyDeleteIf I moved to Mexico, did not intermarry, and did not learn Spanish, would I be 'Mexican?' I'd venture to say most Mexicans would say I was delusional.
Anti-Gnostic, I too find your attitude revolting. Defining oneself as American is not subject to racial descent or language fluency. Would you say Native Americans are less American because they speak different languages and aren't of Western European descent?
ReplyDeleteIn fact, your stipulation that he should marry into the "market-dominant ethnicity" is extremely strange: what is that for, to breed out his Mexican genes? In the part of America he was born in, they've been speaking Spanish for hundreds of years, far longer than anyone has been speaking English there, and last I heard America was not a nationality based on ethnicity.
I would put it like this: the Native Americans are more 'American' than you are. Propositional nationhood is a modern experiment. Again, if I moved to Mexico, didn't intermarry and didn't speak Spanish, would I be 'Mexican?' Most of the world, Lebanon for example, bases citizenship on patrimony. Do you find the Lebanese 'revolting?'
ReplyDeleteOther countries don't have things like the right not to have a confession beaten out of you. Should we imitate them in that, as well?
ReplyDelete