Why Are American Citizens Getting Locked Up and Even Deported By Immigration Authorities?

On November 5, 40-year-oldAntonio Montejanowas holiday shopping with his four children at a Los Angeles mall and unintentionally dropped a $10 bottle of cologne that his young daughter begged him to buy into a bag of items he had already purchased. Upon leaving the store, Montejano was stopped by security guards and arrestedfor shoplifting. He assumed the ordeal would end quickly since he had no prior criminal record. Instead he spent two nights in a Santa Monica, CA police station followed by another two nights in a Los Angeles county jail on suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant.

Montejano pleaded with officers about his citizenship, presenting them with his driver’s license and other legal identification, but they wouldn't budge.“I told every officer I was in front of that I’m an American citizen, and they didn’t believe me,”MontejanotoldtheNew York Times. He believes his detention was a direct result of his ethnicity. “I look Mexican 100 percent,” he says.

Because of an “immigration detainer,” Montejano was denied bail and held even after a criminal court judge canceled his fine and ordered his release. He was finally freed on November 9, following intervention from the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent a copy of his passport and birth certificate to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This is the second time Montejano, who was born in Los Angeles, has been mistakenly targeted by immigration authorities. They failed to recognize his citizenship in 1996 as well, prompting his wrongful deportation to Mexico. The ACLU discovered that his records were never corrected, which explains why his arrest led to a positive match in the DHS database. 


Montejano's mistaken imprisonment comes on top of an explosion in immigration detentions and deportations in recent years, as well as federal immigration programs that rely on participation with local law enforcement. He is just oneof the hundreds of thousands of people, mostly undocumentedimmigrants, whose lives and families are torn apart each year by our dysfunctionalimmigration system.

“Secure Communities” is the latest of these controversial programs, introduced and piloted by the Bush administration in 14 jurisdictions beginning in 2008. According to an October 2011 report by researchers at UC-Berkeley School of Law,“Secure communities by the numbers,” the program has "expanded dramatically"under President Obama and is currently "active in 1,595 jurisdictions in 44 states and territories, a 65% increase since the beginning of this year." Since the beginning of Obama's term, his administration has overseen the deportation of 1.1 million people, “the highest number in six decades"according to theNew York Times. ICE is so pleased with Secure Communities, it plans to expand its reach to all US jurisdictions by 2013.

The program requires local jails to crosscheck fingerprints of jailed individuals with Homeland Security's immigration database. If a positive match is found,federal immigration officials can issue detainers that authorize local law enforcement to hold the suspect in custody for up to 48 hours.

However, the DHS database is riddled with flaws, as demonstrated by the growing number of US citizen being wrongfully tagged.TheNew York Timesnotes, “Unlike the federal criminal databases administered by the FBI, Homeland Security records include all immigration transactions, not just violations. An immigrant who has always maintained legal status, including those who naturalized to become American citizens, can still trigger a fingerprint match.”

Although it's difficult to obtain an exact number of Americans illegally detained by ICE, Jacqueline Stevens,a political science professor at Northwestern University estimates that over 4,000 US citizens were detained or deported in 2010 alone. According to astudypublished by Stevens last spring, this raises the total number of American citizens detained or deported since 2003 to well over 20,000.