<
https://newrepublic.com/post/203195/ice-almost-deports-native-american-woman-arizona>
"The Trump administration tried to deport a Native American woman.
Leticia Jacobo, a 24-year-old member of the Arizona Salt River Pima-Maricopa
Indian Community, was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, in
September for allegedly driving on a suspended license. She was supposed to be
released on November 11, but was issued a random ICE detainer that day—which
forced her to stay in place for 48 hours while Immigration and Customs
Enforcement prepared to deport her.
“My sister said, ‘How is she going to get deported if she’s a Native American?’
and ‘We have proof,’” Jacobo’s sister Maria Nunez told the
Arizona Mirror.
“They said, ‘Well, we don’t know because we’re not immigration and we can’t
answer those questions. We’re just holding her for them. So, when they pick her
up tonight they’re going to go ahead and deport her to wherever they’re going
to take her, but we have no information on that.’”
Jacobo’s family scrambled to prove that she was unjustly detained, posting on
Facebook, contacting tribal leaders, and even bringing her birth certificate to
the jail. Her Social Security number was also on file. Polk County Sheriff
Office Spokesman Lt. Mark Chance eventually admitted that the jail had made a
massive mistake and the detainer was meant for someone else.
“It was human error, but I’m sure as soon as the command staff find out about
it, they’re going to have some meetings with their supervisors internally and
be like, ‘Hey, guys, we gotta keep our thumb on this, this is silly,’” he said.
“Silly” is putting it mildly. Nearly deporting a woman with more right to be in
this country than most is a product of the racial profiling inherent in
President Trump’s immigration crackdown. ICE has previously stated that
“ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate
circumstances,” and that “officers might reasonably rely on the fact that
someone exclusively speaks Spanish to support reasonable suspicion that the
person is here illegally.”
Back in January, during Trump’s first week in office, the Navajo Nation
announced that ICE had harassed at least 15 Indigenous Americans at their homes
and workplaces simply because they looked Latino. That strategy (and the cruel
processes it produces) has only persisted since."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
