20170806 "False Positive" bei USA Einreise trifft auch hunderte US Bürger

U.S. Citizen Who Was Held By ICE For 3 Years Denied Compensation By Appeals Court

In our flyer PNR - Über die Gefahr in einer No-Fly Liste zu landen we have pointed to the danger that foreigners have no rights in the US as one can see in the ESTA document everyone has to sign (on the right).

But even US citizens have similar problems. Davino Watson, a U.S. citizen was imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Davino Watson told the immigration officers that he was a U.S. citizen. He told jail officials that he was a U.S. citizen. He told a judge. He repeated it again and again.

There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. Watson, who was 23 and didn't have a high school diploma when he entered ICE custody, didn't have a lawyer of his own. So he hand-wrote a letter to immigration officers, attaching his father's naturalization certificate, and kept repeating his status to anyone who would listen.

Still, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation. Deportation proceedings continued for another year.

Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing "regrettable failures of the government."

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is "disturbing," the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.

Mary Meg McCarthy, the director of the Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center, says it's not unusual for a person fighting deportation to spend years in detention. NPR's Eyder Peralta reported on the phenomenon in December:

"It's illegal for U.S. immigration authorities to hold Americans in detention."

However, an NPR analysis of data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request shows that hundreds of American citizens each year find themselves in a situation similar. Those data show that from 2007 through July of last year, 693 U.S. citizens were held in local jails on federal detainers — in other words, at the request of immigration officials. And 818 more Americans were held in immigration detention centers during that same time frame, according to data obtained through a separate FOIA request by Northwestern University professor Jacqueline Stevens and analyzed by NPR.

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