11 year old U.S. Citizen detained in Arstesia, New Mexico for over a month

The Los Angeles Times reported on August 14, 1014 that an 11 year old boy was detained for more than month in Artesia, New Mexico before an immigration attorney who happened to be visiting the facility discovered his status.  This highlights the problematic nature of the “processing” of the wave of unaccompanied minors that is occurring by the Department of Homeland Security.  The officers involved are, first are foremost, law enforcement.  Their job is to remove people from the United States and achieve “record numbers,” as if immigration were sales.  Even giving them the benefit of the doubt, which I don’t, the officers would not be apply to apply the complicated law of derived or acquired citizenship on the fly.  These laws determine who is a citizen if a child is born abroad to a U.S. Citizen parent or parents, or if a lawful permanent resident child’s parents naturalize.  Even DHS attorneys miss the fact that the people they’re deporting are U.S. Citizens on occasion, unless a lawyer is retained by the family who points it out.  The law is not uniform, but depends on the date of the child’s birth.

The L.A. Times article’s author, Cindy Carcamo, reported that in this case the young boy who’d been detained was born abroad to a U.S. Citizen father.  This implies that the border patrol cannot be trusted to simply ask of these children whether their parents are United States citizens.  The President’s insistence on expediting the removal of these unaccompanied minors only increases the risk that other citizens will be sent back to Central America.  The full text of the L.A. Times article can be read here: http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-na-citizen-detained-20140815-story.html?utm_source=AILA+Mailing&utm_campaign=4d78e20d2b-AILA8_8_15_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3c0e619096-4d78e20d2b-291063101.