Inclusion Daily Express

February 28, 2008

Family Sues Immigration, Sheriff's Department Over Improper Deportation

By Dave Reynolds

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- California man with intellectual disabilities, who was wrongly deported to Mexico last May, has sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on Wednesday on behalf of Pedro Guzman, 30, and his mother, Maria Carbajal.

Guzman, who was born in Los Angeles, was serving a 40-day sentence in an L.A. County jail for trespassing, when Sheriffs deputies pulled him out and turned him over to immigration officials. Guzman was then sent to Mexico with just three dollars in his pockets.

A short time later, the family received a phone call from Guzman, who said he believed he was in Tijuana, Mexico. But the call was disconnected before they could get more information from him.

The family then started searching for Guzman, spending all of their savings to do so. The U.S. federal government rejected the family's requests to help in the search.

Immigration officials picked up Guzman on August 5 when he tried to cross the border at Calexico, Mexico. His family said Pedro was traumatized by the ordeal, during which time he had to eat out of garbage cans, drink from rivers, and walk nearly 100 miles.

The suit seeks unspecified damages. Family members told the Los Angeles Times that they want the court to acknowledge that the government violated Guzman's constitutional rights, and for the government to admit its wrongdoing.

"I want them to see that what they did was not right," said Carbajal, who described wandering through Tijuana, leaving fliers with her son's photo at the morgue, hospitals, churches and shelters.

Related:

"Suit filed over disabled U.S. citizen's deportation ordeal" (Los Angeles Times)

"L.A. Family Says U.S. Immigration Wrongly Deported Son" June 14, 2007 (Inclusion Daily Express Archives)

May 30, 2008