
How a U.S. citizen was mistakenly targeted for deportation. He’s not alone - tonyztan
http://beta.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ice-citizen-arrest-20171129-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter
======
Someone1234
I'm a naturalised citizen.

I like to joke that I have more documenting showing my legal right to be in
the US than my wife's grandmother. My wife's grandmother has a birth
certificate but it is water damaged, illegible, and falling apart. Besides
that she has no state ID (driver's license expired twenty years ago), and few
other forms of identity.

Americans seem quite dead set against a national ID scheme (and associated
database). The problem with that is that we wind up with a de-facto one, SSNs
and social security cards being your main proof of who you are and your legal
status. Birth certificates are problematic because they've never been
standardised, and have no real fraud mitigation mechanisms (e.g. watermarks).
Certainly my daughter's US birth certificate would be trivial to duplicate.

This is in no small part why I ordered my daughter a US passport even before
it was needed. It is one of the best forms of ID and citizenship proof you can
have, even if it expires you remain in the database indefinitely. It is also
why I ordered myself a US passport-card, so I have proof of citizenship in my
wallet at all times.

ICE, interior immigration checkpoints, and other initiatives seem to be on the
rise. Even legal immigrants and US citizens need to protect yourselves,
particularly if you're more likely to be profiled due to race.

~~~
Aloha
The bit about birth certificates isnt all true - mine is from California, its
on intaglio paper, with watermarks, and embossing - that particular paper (a
certified long form) would be hard to copy.

~~~
justin66
I had one like that. Nowadays they issue replacements on much plainer paper
that goes through a laser printer. It's notarized, but nothing about it would
be difficult to counterfeit.

~~~
CodeWriter23
The certificate isn't the proof. Cross-referencing it with a Country
Registrar's computerized records is.

~~~
Declanomous
You could be like a familial relation of mine, who didn't have a social
security card, driver's license, or birth certificate. He lost them a long
time ago.

Birth certificate was impossible to replace because the courthouse or whatever
burned down before the records were computerized.

You can't get a social security card without a driver's license, and vice
versa. He literally had tried almost everything.

In the end another family member photoshopped a social security card so he
could get a driver's license, which he used to get an actual social security
card.

The whole system is stupid as hell. It's easier to navigate if you lie than if
you act truthfully.

------
rdtsc
Hopefully he gets some money out of this. Can't imagine being grabbed, held in
a cell somewhere, and then told I had to be deported all of the sudden.

> Carrillo said his son brought a passport and a certificate of citizenship
> the government issued Carrillo but that ICE officers refused to review the
> documents.

Well that's just baffling. What exactly would they consider proof of
citizenship if a passport and the certificate doesn't do it. What would it
take? What if he didn't have a passport. Many people I know don't have one or
have an expired one. Certainly not a requirement to have one.

> The refusal by ICE officials to listen to Carrillo’s claims of citizenship
> appeared to violate an agency policy that requires officers to thoroughly
> and quickly investigate such claims

It also violates decency and common sense as well, and veers into plain old
brutality.

Rant: One thing I don't understand is why don't people have national ID cards
in US. Most countries I know of have them, here it is a complicated mess of
drivers license, SSN, birth certificates, each states makes their own ID card
thing for those that don't drive. Every single time elections come around
there is talk of ID cards and supposed voter fraud for months afterwards, with
everyone pointing fingers and insinuating things. Then there are cases like
these. People's identities are stolen based on the stupid SSN number and a
name, most of those are already on the black market somewhere already.

~~~
aero142
The culture of the US has 2 parts that really don't like national IDs. A
strong distrust of the federal government and a large number of evangelical
christians. The natural distrust means that people generally don't want to
give anything more to the federal government in general so it would take
enormous political capital to add this. Second, the evangelical christians
take end times prophesies from Revalation in the Bible very seriously. They
believe that a national ID card is the "mark of the beast" that will be how
the world is enslaved. It's a bit weird to outsiders, but it's a surprisingly
common belief.

[https://www.thefamilyinternational.org/en/viewpoints/future/...](https://www.thefamilyinternational.org/en/viewpoints/future/65/)

~~~
morganvachon
> _" It's a bit weird to outsiders, but it's a surprisingly common belief."_

It's a bit weird to some of us Christians, too. :-) Some of us realize that
the Bible is a book of metaphors and guidelines, not a literal future-history
account. What John saw in his visions and how to interpret that has been a
major source of discussion among religious scholars for a very long time now.

I am opposed to a national ID on a very specific point: It can be used as a
tool for voter suppression if not done correctly.

~~~
madamelic
> Some of us realize that the Bible is a book of metaphors and guidelines, not
> a literal future-history account.

The first time someone told me that the story of Adam and Eve was allegorical
and not literal, it blew my mind.

I had grown up and been taught "literalism", in that everything that Bible
said was literally the truth and not simply a story.

~~~
Declanomous
Serious question, how did you rationalize contradictions in the bible? The
story of Adam and Eve directly contradicts the story of creation told
immediately prior.

The Bible didn't make any sense to me until I took a religious studies course
and learned that the old testament is basically the verbal tradition of the
ancient Jewish people in written form. I had tried reading the bible when I
was much younger, and the contradictions were so absurd I started highlighting
them, and I ran out of highlighter before I ran out of Bible. I'm still not
religious, but at least religion kind of makes sense to me now.

------
walid
The reason for his detention is mentioned near the end of the article:

"After several hours, Carrillo and another detainee were driven to a privately
run immigration detention center in Adelanto, 85 miles outside Los Angeles in
the Mojave Desert."

Privately run centers don't get paid based on citizenship or not but on
services rendered.

~~~
CodeWriter23
I wonder if the $20K settlement is a contractual sanction against the vendor
for making an identity error.

------
sandworm101
There are so many underlying issues here. Race. Politics. Police conduct.
Private prisons. Even NSA-level surveillance (the obvious efforts to
geolocation his phone prior to the arrest). Demonetization of felons. Just
about everything that is wrong in the US landed on this guy. Everyone needs a
lawyer. You don't have to pay them, but memorize their name/number for that
day you find the world landing on your head.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Demonetization of felons_

Do you mean disenfranchisement?

~~~
aqme28
I think he means "demonization" but it's a really interesting typo.

~~~
bradlys
That makes a lot more sense. I was really confused and wondering if we had
veered off into YouTube territory. Although, there is still an argument to be
had about felons are monetized because private prisons make money off of it.
Hmm...

------
dhruvrrp
Shouldnt the government have a database for all the US passports it has
issued? How does a problem like this happen to someone who has a passport?

------
godelski
Just to put things in perspective, a quick google search gives a number of
380k-442k detentions per year [1]. The article states 2,840 citizens
identified for deportation since 2002 (or average ~190/yr)[^]. Giving us an
error rate of ~0.046%, averaged over the 15 years.

[^] were these people detained? Does it count in the data set?

[1] [http://www.endisolation.org/resources/immigration-
detention/](http://www.endisolation.org/resources/immigration-detention/)
(these numbers may be wrong, I haven't fact checked this site)

~~~
rosser
Any is too many.

~~~
dominotw
Just contrasting this to death sentence

> estimate that if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of
> death indefinitely at least 4.1% would be exonerated. [1]

@_@

1\.
[http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230.abstract)

------
ShabbosGoy
I’m actually in favor of having a biometric system like Aadhar in the United
States.

We should be automating our border patrol, I cringe at how inefficient our
government is. Why are we still using paper records and certificates? These
government bureaucrats are literal parasites on our society.

~~~
tekakistocracy
So let's replace this "inefficient" human bureaucracy with the fine work of
the top dollar private sector contractors that have spearheaded advanced
biometrics programs like Theranos, run it as efficiently as healthcare.gov,
with all this private data stored in a database as secure as that of Equifax.

~~~
ShabbosGoy
Leeching off of the taxpayer is like a drug. And much like an addict, the
government bureaucrat will fight to maintain their unearned privileges. Sad!

~~~
guelo
Wouldn't a private government contractor also fight to maintain their
contracts?

------
Aloha
I'm wholly opposed to a national ID scheme, but a national ID scheme would
prevent stuff like this.

We currently have no national registry of who, or who isn't a citizen, and no
verifiable way to tie identity to work status, or anything else.

Stuff like this is part of the price we pay for freedom I suppose.

~~~
socalnate1
"Stuff like this is part of the price we pay for freedom I suppose."

What an odd conclusion to draw from this. Do countries with national ID's not
have freedom?

~~~
Aloha
They seem to have less freedom overall, theoretically - in any case, the
American psyche has a well ingrained fear of big government, we fought a war
over it, more or less - a war that we in part continue to fight amongst
ourselves.

~~~
ssijak
Are you living in fairy land? Or in a bubble? How does USA citizen have more
rights/freedom than for example Scandinavians?

~~~
marcoperaza
A few ways:

1) Freedom of speech in the US is the most unrestricted in the world. "Hate
speech" (or more accurately: whatever the current cultural consensus deems to
be beyond the pale) is not an exception.

2) Protections for criminal defendants in the US are the greatest in the
world:

* No other country has a hard rule that excludes all illegally-collected evidence, and legally-collected evidence flowing from illegally-collected evidence, from trial.

* More generally, we have very extensive rules of evidence that limit what can be admitted into court, to protect the rights of the criminally accused, and both sides of a civil case. The UK has similarly extensive rules, but the rest of Europe does not.

* An absolute right to trial by jury for anything greater than a petty criminal charge.

3) The right to homeschool your children. This is essentially illegal in
Sweden, Germany, and some other European countries.

~~~
skissane
> 2) Protections for criminal defendants in the US are the greatest in the
> world:

Other countries (such as Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) have
weaker protections for criminal defendants during the trial, yes. But,
assuming you are convicted, prison sentences tend to be shorter on average and
there is no death penalty. On another point, to compare Australia to the US,
the High Court of Australia has basically full appellate jurisdiction (even on
state law questions) when it chooses to exercise it, whereas the US Supreme
Court's jurisdiction is limited to appeals on points of federal law only, and
AEDPA has limited access to federal habeas corpus. So I think the convicted
have greater rights of appeal under Australian law than US law. So it isn't
clear to me that criminal defendants actually have more rights under the US
system overall – they have more rights prior to conviction, but less rights
afterward.

~~~
marcoperaza
I don't see how the different jurisdictions of the high courts really plays
into this. Everything in the Bill of Rights (with the exception of the right
to jury trial in civil cases, recognized substantially by every state anyway)
is applied to the states as a matter of federal law and is therefore subject
to review by the federal Supreme Court. For things not implicating any federal
question, why is having an appeal to the federal Supreme Court important?
Having an extra layer of government does not grant you more rights in and of
itself.

~~~
skissane
From the criminal appellants viewpoint, it is in their interests to have as
many opportunities to appeal and as many grounds to appeal as possible. The
more opportunities to appeal, the greater chance that one of your appeals may
turn out favourably to you. So, in the US system, you cannot appeal points of
state law to federal courts, but in the Australian system you can, so you have
more opportunities to appeal in Australia. Plus, AEDPA limits access to
federal habeas corpus (which is a form of collateral appeal as opposed to
direct appeal), whereas there is no corresponding limitation under Australian
law.

How does this to relate to rights? Well, arguably one of our rights is the
right to appeal adverse judicial decisions. And the Australian legal system
grants more extensive rights in that area than the US one does.

~~~
marcoperaza
Again, if a state law case implicates any federal issues, such as the Bill of
Rights, then you can appeal to the US Supreme Court.

For those not well-versed in law, this discussion is very misleading.
Appellate courts do not retry _facts_ , they only decide if there was an error
of _law_ in the lower court. American states retain a lot more power than
Australian states do, including the right to their own common law and to apply
their own judicial philosophy. To substitute the judgment of the federal
courts on issues of purely state _law_ is to abolish federalism to a large
degree.

~~~
skissane
> For those not well-versed in law, this discussion is very misleading.
> Appellate courts do not retry facts, they only decide if there was an error
> of law in the lower court.

Appellate courts (at least in some systems) are allowed to reopen the facts,
for example to consider new evidence not available at the time of trial - see
e.g. [http://www.courtofappealbc.ca/appellant-
guidebook/3.5-introd...](http://www.courtofappealbc.ca/appellant-
guidebook/3.5-introducing-new-evidence)

> American states retain a lot more power than Australian states do, including
> the right to their own common law and to apply their own judicial
> philosophy. To substitute the judgment of the federal courts on issues of
> purely state law is to abolish federalism to a large degree.

Australian state court systems have always been subject to review by higher
courts. Originally by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London,
and now the High Court of Australia has taken over that jurisdiction. I don't
think it is reasonable to say that because we do federalism differently than
the US, we don't do federalism at all.

It is also worth keeping in mind that there is a potential tension between
states rights and individual rights. If a state is trying to limit my rights
as an individual, and the federal government or courts wants to stop that, and
"states rights" limit the ability of the federal government or courts to step
in and protect my individual rights, then that is a case in which my
individual rights are being sacrificed to protect "states rights". So, I'd say
that in the matter of appeals, the US chooses to prioritise states rights over
individual rights in a way in which Australia doesn't.

~~~
marcoperaza
You seem convinced that additional appeals can only work in the defendants
favor. Suppose that a state supreme court decides to give more rights to
defendants under its common law. Suppose the state supreme court finds for a
defendant based on that. Allowing the prosecution to appeal that decision to
the federal supreme court actually HURTS the defendant.

I'm not saying there's no federalism in Australia. I'm saying that the
federalism is substantially limited by having one general common law to rule
them all. And also by imposing a single approach to judicial decision making.

Also, I think you continue to misrepresent the situation. You have every right
to appeal a violation of your federally-granted rights to the federal Supreme
Court. It is only rights granted to you only by your state that cannot,
generally, be appealed. As I said above, it also means that prosecutors cannot
try to get a decision made for you, by a state court on the basis of state
law, overturned by the federal courts. So it cuts both ways.

~~~
skissane
> You seem convinced that additional appeals can only work in the defendants
> favor.

No denying that in the general case greater rights of appeal could work
against the defendant as well as in favour of them. But in practice it all
depends on how defendant-friendly the federal and individual state court
systems actually are. I'm sure that for at least some US states, if the
federal court system was granted Australian-style supremacy over them, the end
result would be more defendant-friendly than it is now. Maybe for some other
states it would be the opposite, but you have to ask which of those two
situations would be the more common.

------
innagadadavida
The great britain deported a bunch of unwanted people to Australia back in the
day. Instead of wasting tax payer money, more criminals should be deported
out. May be to Puerto Rico or some other territory far away where labor is
cheap.

~~~
corpMaverick
Will you be ok with Puerto Rico deporting all of its criminals to your city ?

~~~
roywiggins
It was (is?) a thing that happens.

[http://www.philly.com/philly/news/special_packages/Puerto_Ri...](http://www.philly.com/philly/news/special_packages/Puerto_Ricos_solution_to_heroin_crisis_one-
way_tickets_to_Philly.html?mobi=true)

------
creaghpatr
>As a young teenager, Carrillo automatically became a U.S. citizen when his
mother went through the naturalization process. As an adult, he had two
serious run-ins with law enforcement: a 2007 conviction for carrying a
concealed weapon and another in 2011 for sending sexually explicit material to
a minor, according to law enforcement records reviewed by The Times.

>In the second case, Carrillo was sentenced to 240 days in jail and three
years’ probation, the records show.

In theory ICE could check this out, but sanctuary city policy is to not
cooperate with ICE, so my guess is they did not have immediate access to this
information.

Given that this was an outlier case, I'm guessing the city would withhold the
verification because most times it would show illegal status. Of course, it
would make sense if all the enforcement agencies had synchronized data, but
that seems like a pipe dream for an organization like the US gov.

~~~
pthreads
>In theory ICE could check this out, but sanctuary city policy is to not
cooperate with ICE, so my guess is they did not have immediate access to this
information.

I don't think this has anything to do with sanctuary cities. I am convinced
they had easy access to his info:

"As a young teenager, Carrillo automatically became a U.S. citizen when his
mother went through the naturalization process."

That means USCIS had everything -- his SSN, fingerprints, photos, (even though
from his teenage years). Could have been trivial for ICE to check, if they
wanted to.

~~~
creaghpatr
My speculation was dead wrong, in fact LA functions more or less like a
regular city regarding the LAPD/ICE relationship

[https://theintercept.com/2017/02/27/los-angeles-mayor-
flirts...](https://theintercept.com/2017/02/27/los-angeles-mayor-flirts-with-
sanctuary-movement-while-collaborating-with-ice/)

>LAPD officers have historically shared intelligence with ICE through the
CalGang database system, and ICE agents are in the county jails on a near-
daily basis.

