He's been a U.S. citizen for 20 years, yet ICE detained him for 3 days

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Richard Lui/The Desert Sun

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — For three days in July 2016, immigration officials detained a man who became a U.S. citizen more than 20 years ago despite repeated assertions of his citizenship.

Sergio Carrillo of Rialto, Calif., was born in Mexico and became a citizen in 1994. Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained him at the Adelanto, Calif., Detention Facility about 40 miles away.

How did that happen? Federal immigration authorities had no record of his citizenship in their database — a common problem for people who were naturalized before 2008 — according to lawyer Jennie Pasquarella, the American Civil Liberties Union of California’s director of immigrants’ rights.

Authorities later discovered Carrillo’s last name was incorrectly listed in the database as “Cabrillo,” according to court filings.

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Carrillo and the ACLU sued the federal government and 10 ICE officers in July; they reached a $20,000 settlement this week. The agreement is not an admission of liability or fault on the part of the government, according to the settlement.

The case highlights several problems with the country’s immigration system, Pasquarella said.

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Carrillo was transported to Adelanto, where an officer also ignored his citizenship claims, according to the lawsuit. He remained there for three days until a lawyer provided officials with his U.S. passport.

ICE officials then discovered Carrillo’s name was incorrectly entered into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database. The record and his fingerprints were not digitized and electronically stored when his citizenship certificate was issued, so they were not available in any database, according to court filings.

There isn’t good data on how many U.S. citizens get caught in the federal government’s net, but Pasquarella of the ACLU suspects the number is “quite high.”

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She pointed to the case of Guadalupe Plascencia, a citizen for about 20 years, who was detained in March in San Bernardino. Plascencia was released once her daughter proved her citizenship.

Too often in the immigration system “it’s guilty until proven innocent,” Pasquarella said. “It’s the exact reverse of what the Constitution demands.”

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To avoid being detained like Carrillo or Plascencia, naturalized citizens could memorize their Alien Registration Number or “A” Number, said immigration lawyer Hadley Bajramovic of Riverside, Calif.

This number identifies people who have applied to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for permanent residence or citizenship. Memorizing the eight- or nine-digit number the way others memorize their Social Security numbers would be easier than always carrying documents, she said.

Follow Rebecca Plevin on Twitter: @rebeccaplevin

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