ICE Is Detaining and Deporting Citizens

Testimony of Kara Hartzler, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, AZ House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law at a “Hearing on Problems with ICE Interrogation, Detention, and Removal Procedures.”
February, 2008

Good afternoon. My name is Kara Hartzler, and I am an attorney at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona. The Florence Project is a nonprofit organization providing free legal services to persons in Arizona who are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as “ICE.” We do this by conducting legal orientation presentations to detainees before their first deportation hearing and by providing individual follow-up services for those who do not have lawyers but may be eligible to remain in the United States. In the course of my work with the Florence Project, I’ve talked to thousands of people who are in the process of being deported. I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you a few of their stories today.

About a month ago, I spoke with a man named Thomas Warziniak in Florence, Arizona on the morning of his first deportation hearing. When I asked Mr. Warziniak where he was born, he replied, “Minnesota.” He told me he was raised in the South and that he had never been out of the United States in his life. When I asked if he knew why the U.S. was trying to deport him, he said that someone had told him he had a “foreign-sounding” name. Because he was detained, he did not have access to his birth certificate, nor did he have any family or friends who could obtain a copy. He had heard it cost thirty dollars to order a copy of his birth certificate, so he was working in the prison kitchen for a dollar a day until he had the money to order one. So far, he had eight dollars, and he hoped to earn the remaining twenty-two before his next court date in several weeks.

In my experience, stories like that of Mr. Warziniak’s are no longer rare. Under immigration law, a person is a citizen of the United States by birth, naturalization, or because the person automatically acquired or derived citizenship through a parent. On average, our organization is currently seeing forty to fifty cases per month in which individuals with potentially valid claims to U.S. citizenship are being detained and even deported. Why aren’t we hearing about these cases? Because, as is often the situation, it’s happening to the most vulnerable in our society – to racial and ethnic minorities, the mentally ill, people who cannot afford to hire a lawyer, people who are homeless and have no access to documents, people with no family to help them.

In immigration court, unlike criminal proceedings, the government does not provide a lawyer for those who cannot afford one. One of our clients named Anna who suffers from psychosis and schizophrenia represented herself before the immigration judge. Anna consistently maintained three things: that she was born in France, that former president John F. Kennedy was her father, and that the Pope was also her father. Despite the obvious unreliability of the latter two statements, ICE used the former to argue that she could be deported her to France. ICE presented no evidence, apart from her statements, that she was born outside the United States, and the French consulate denied that she is a citizen of that country. Anna is still detained in Eloy, Arizona.

Sometimes persons who are born at home for religious or other reasons were never issued a birth certificate and are subsequently detained and deported. Javier was born at home in El Paso, Texas and never obtained a birth certificate. After completing probation for a misdemeanor, his probation officer informed him that she would have to report him to ICE. When Javier told her he was born in Texas, she replied, quote “I know, I’m sorry, but I have to cover my ass.”

In some cases, the detention and deportation of U.S. citizens is the result of inexcusable error. About a year ago, I met a man named Joseph who was detained in Eloy, Arizona. Joseph was born in the Sudan and had automatically derived U.S. citizenship if he could prove that his parents naturalized before his eighteenth birthday. To prove this, Joseph submitted a copy of his original birth certificate in Arabic and a translation to the judge showing that he was born on October 2, 1985. However, ICE submitted a competing translation that incorrectly interpreted the date on the certificate as “February 10, 1985,” based on the assumption that the first number in the date represented the month, rather than the day, which is not the practice in the Sudan. The judge nevertheless accepted ICE’s translation, rejected Joseph’s, and ordered him deported. When I talked to Joseph, he was disgusted and wanted to give up. I convinced him to let me try to reopen his case, and, with a new translation from an Arabic expert, the judge finally acknowledged that Joseph was a citizen. Even after the judge’s ruling, Joseph was not released for another forty days – a full year and a half after he was initially detained.

Following my conversation with Mr. Warziniak, the man born in Minnesota, I contacted a reporter who was able to find a record of his birth within several hours. After being incarcerated for over a month, Mr. Warziniak was finally released. Ironically, he is one of the lucky ones – another man I am assisting with a valid claim to U.S. citizenship has been detained for over four years. It is my observation that these cases are surprisingly, painfully common – that U.S. citizens are being detained and deported from the United States, not monthly or weekly, but on a daily basis. Based on my experience, it is conceivable that under our current system, anyone in this room could potentially be incarcerated and permanently exiled to a country in which he or she has never set foot. Until better procedural safeguards are implemented, it is likely that our country’s fervor over the issue of immigration will continue to result in these egregious injustices perpetrated against our own citizens.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my clients’ stories with this Subcommittee.