The Supreme Court will soon decide whether or not to hear a case in which US Border Patrol agents deported a less-than-a-year-old girl, a US citizen, when they deported her illegal immigrant dad, instead of allowing the girl to remain with her 4th generation American mom—all, according to the agents, to save the grand sum of $200.
Adam Liptak has the story in Tuesday’s NY Times. Here are some clips:
A few days before her daughter Rosa’s first birthday, Monica Castro and the girl’s father had a violent argument in the trailer they all shared near Lubbock, Tex. Ms. Castro fled, leaving her daughter behind.
Ms. Castro, a fourth-generation American citizen, went to the local Border Patrol station. She said she would give the agents there information about the girl’s father, a Mexican in the country illegally, in exchange for help recovering her daughter.
Ms. Castro lived up to her side of the deal. But the federal government ended up deporting little Rosa, an American citizen, along with her father, Omar Gallardo. Ms. Castro would not see her daughter again for three years.[VERY LARGE SNIP]
The agents themselves have rejected the assertion that they may have acted a little rashly.
Holding Mr. Gallardo and the girl overnight, long enough for an American court to sort things out, would have involved “a tremendous amount of money,” Gregory L. Kurupas, the agent in charge of the Lubbock and Amarillo stations at the time, testified in a 2006 deposition.
Asked to quantify the daunting sum, Agent Kurupas replied, “Well over $200 plus.”
Read the rest.
Also, read the summary of facts in the petition to SCOTUS, which tells the story in even more appalling detail.
Photo by George Gongora/Corpus Christi Caller-Times
AND IN OTHER NEWS: A DOJ REPORT ISSUED MONDAY SUGGESTS THAT THE POST 9/11 FBI GOT ALL NIXON-ENEMIES-LIST-ISH ON SOME ANTIWAR GROUPS
According to the LA Times and others, the Bush-era FBI often classified nonviolent antiwar protester groups and their acts of civil disobedience “under its ‘acts of terrorism’ classification.”
Here’s how the LAT story opens:
FBI agents improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and several other domestic advocacy groups after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and put the names of some of their members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be “factually weak,” the Justice Department said Monday…..
You’d like to think that one of the top priorities for all levels of law enforcement in this country, if not THE top priority, is to protect a child in any given situation. An American child, for that matter. They’d managed to somehow become the threat to a child, in this instance. I don’t know what the motivating factor was in the Border Patrol agents acting, as President Obama would say, this stupidly, but whatever it is needs to be deeply scrutinized and perhaps eradicated.