'Just News' Blog

"U.S. immigration officials confirmed this week that they wrongly deported Lyttle, 31, who his family says is mentally ill and suffers from mild retardation, in December after finding him in a North Carolina prison. He and his lawyer say he spent four months bouncing among Latin American prisons and homeless shelters before ending up earlier this month at a U.S. embassy in Guatemala, where officials confirmed his citizenship.

Lyttle returned to his family on Friday, but only after immigration officials at the Atlanta airport tried to deport him again. He said that, throughout the process, federal agents repeatedly ignored his assurances that he was a U.S. citizen and native of Rowan County, about 125 miles southwest of the Triangle."

KRISTIN COLLINS for McClatchy Newspapers.

[NOTE: UC Santa Barbara Prof. Jacqueline Stevens has been blogging about this case since day one, and broke the story first.]

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"For the father, the choice was obvious: An engineer with several jobs yet little money, he saw no future for his daughter and son in their struggling country, Ecuador. Eight years ago, he paid coyotes to smuggle him into Texas, then headed to New York, where his wife and children flew in as tourists, and stayed.

But the consequences of that clear-cut decision — the immigrant’s perennial impulse to uproot for the sake of the next generation — have been anything but simple."

DAVID GONZALEZ in the New York Times.

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"Jeanne Lyttle's prayers were answered Friday morning, when ICE officials released Marc from the Atlanta Detention Center. When we contacted ICE officials they released a statement saying, "Immediately upon learning that Mr. Lyttle was claiming U.S. Citizenship and had been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE conducted a thorough investigation and review of his file and all available information. Based upon the available information, ICE concluded that Mr. Lyttle is probably a U.S. citizen. ICE has initiated and will complete all the necessary actions to correct DHS databases."

And after a long two years of trying to get back into his family's arms, Marc Lyttle still has a smile, but also a statement for ICE as well.

"ICE needs to really know what they are doing. They just can't deport anybody and that's what they did to me," says Marc."

CHAUNCY GLOVER for WTVM.com.

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"When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation."

GINGER THOMPSON in the New York Times.

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U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder ruled the so-called widow penalty doesn't necessarily require that immigrants' permanent residency applications be denied when their American spouses die. Citing a 2006 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Snyder ruled this week that applicants don't lose their status as spouses of U.S. citizens if the death occurs before the government rules on their applications.

The decision, if made final, would be a victory for more than 200 people across the country who have been affected by the widow penalty, said attorney Brent Renison, who filed the class-action lawsuit in Los Angeles."

RAQUEL MARIA DILLON for the Associated Press.

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The national media invades El Paso—and gets the story wrong.

MELISSA del BOSQUE in the Texas Observer.

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"The nation's top two labor federations announced a framework Tuesday for comprehensive immigration reform, setting aside differences with the hope of pushing legislation through this year.

The agreement, supported by the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win federation, supports the legalization of the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants and the formation of an independent commission to analyze the labor market's needs and assess shortages for the admission of future foreign workers."

ANNA GORMAN in the Los Angeles Times.

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"Many police officers in New Jersey are misusing a 2007 directive by the state’s attorney general by questioning the immigration status of Latino drivers, passengers, pedestrians and even crime victims, reporting them to federal immigration authorities and jailing some for days without criminal charges, according to a Seton Hall Law School study."

NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.

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"The American judicial system deems everyone innocent until proven guilty and guarantees a fair hearing with a lawyer _ but not when it comes to immigration. Then there are far fewer rights. And as the system comes under pressure from a flood of new cases, the strain is showing.

One result is that U.S. citizens arrested as illegal immigrants or deportable residents cannot count on the legal system as a safety net. The odds are stacked against them. On the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press has documented more than 55 such cases since 2000, and immigration lawyers count hundreds more."

SUZANNE GAMBOA for the Associated Press.

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"In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases, on the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. Immigration lawyers say there are actually hundreds of such cases."

SUZANNE GAMBOA, TRACI CARL and PETER PRENGAMAN for the Associated Press.  [Also here and here.]

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"Castillo said he wasn't worried -- not until he was shackled and transferred to a federal detention center. He spent months in custody before an appeals panel blocked his deportation and an immigration judge finally ordered Castillo set free."

ANDREW BECKER and PATRICK J. McDONNELL in the Los Angeles Times.

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"James and Sheila Slaughter said that when they answered the door of their home in San Luis, Ariz., on a July afternoon last year, they were surprised to find five armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers strapped into bulky bulletproof vests accusing them of harboring an illegal immigrant."

SOLOMON MOORE in the New York Times.

[And here's a link to the complaint filed in federal court; read the last page first.]

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"The difficulty of confirming the very existence of the dead man, Ahmad Tanveer, 43, a Pakistani New Yorker, shows how death can fall between the cracks in immigration detention, the rapidly growing patchwork of more than 500 county jails, profit-making prisons and federal detention centers where half a million noncitizens were held during the last year while the government tried to deport them.

The case underscores the secrecy and lack of legal accountability that continue to shield the system from independent oversight, despite years of escalating Congressional inquiries and new efforts by Obama administration appointees to promote transparency."

NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.

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