Racism: August 2008 Archives

There is more from Scott Fontaine at the Tacoma News Tribune on the story of the US citizen locked up for seven months in immigration prison and nearly deported due to standard government circumvention of due process.  Notice the contempt with which all the key decisionmakers in the process treated Castillo.

Still, the posture of the article and the reason this is a news item is not that a human being was treated so poorly.  It's that this happened to a U.S. citizen.  The problems that this article uncovers--the failure of the system to obtain accurate results, the inability of many migrants to navigate a complex process--exist for non-citizens as well.  These problems didn't arise by accident.  They have been built into the system to allow the government to imprison and deport more migrants for political gain.

And the idea that the issuance of two "A numbers" for a single individual is a bizarre glitch is just not true.  It happens All. The. Time. 

SCOTT FONTAINE; Published: August 19th, 2008 01:00 AM | Updated: August 19th, 2008 10:33 AM

Rennison Castillo broke the law. He was punished for it. And he thought he had served his time. Instead, the last day of an eight-month jail sentence was the start of a seven-month nightmare that almost ended two years ago with Castillo – a Lakewood resident, Army veteran and American citizen – deported to Belize, a country he left as a child.

He spoke publicly about the incident for the first time earlier this month.

Immigration officials say his case was a rare mistake and that it has prompted closer scrutiny of citizenship claims. But advocates say it’s the kind of mix-up that’s bound to happen as the federal government aggressively moves to deport more criminal immigrants while limiting their access to the legal system.