Editor: When I heard someone online talking about how ICE deported at least 70 US citizens, I was [slightly] shocked. So many mistakes have been made that it just isn’t as shocking as it should be (and would be if it was happening under normal circumstances).
ICE and DHS have arrested and detained US citizens many times since the mass deportations kicked off with coffin-dweller and Nosferatu impersonator, Stephen Miller, leading the charge. Story after story has come out about US citizens getting caught up in ICE raids. There have been several recent reports of citizens stuck sitting in ICE detention centers for weeks.
I wrote extensively about the Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT. I cried off and on for days after a Times photographer talked about the men he saw and just knew were innocent. A man cried for his mother and guards repeatedly slapped him.
It killed my empath soul.
I subsequently wrote about investigations performed by CBS/60 Minutes and ProPublica that found 75% of the men sent there had never committed a crime and the DHS records proved the Trump administration knew before they were deported that they were innocent.
Innocent Men
A gay makeup artist .fled persecution and stayed in another country as he applied for asylum (the LEGAL way). He was eventually granted asylum, and entered the country through a port of entry.
A young man who taught children how to swim and loved his autistic little brother—he was actually deported for his “gang tattoo” of the Autism Awareness ribbon on his calf.
Without due process, we don’t even know for certain that there were no US citizens sent to CECOT!
You know the drill. I sometimes write way too much before an article. Use the button to skip ahead to the news you came here to read.
And lastly, (only because I sense your seething anger towards me and my.. whatever you call the written form of “talking too damn much.”
I’m not sharing any of the videos here, because, honestly, I got physically ill when I saw the video of heavily armed men in military gear, faces totally covered by black or camoflauge masks, beating an immigrant they were abducting from a Walmart parking lot.
We must not allow them to hide their identity. Even if just to remove the sense of empowerment and lack of accountability that being invisible creates psychologically, causing them to behave in ways they would NEVER if they could be identified.
We have soldiers with their faces hidden out walking around with long guns, abusing people and behaving like the KKK—enjoying the permission they’ve been granted to violently assault innocent people for not being white. I’ve seen expressions of sheer terror on the faces of migrants as they are grabbed and dragged away by men wearing jeans and flannel shirts—black fabric covering their faces. Ironically, when a mother and 2 daughters had their door busted down and house raided by 20 federal agents in Oklahoma, they were wearing g badges or uniforms that identified the agency they were from.
She reported seeing agents from the FBI, the US Marshals Service, and ICE. They destroyed the house, took all of their electronic devices and thousands in cash she had to live on until they were settled into the new home. The local news station covering US citizens having their house raided, contacted all of the agencies with a request for comment. It’s complicated, but she couldn’t get her things back when agencies denied they were involved.
Without uniforms or badges—and many of the agents refusing to identify the agency they’re with when asked—how are we supposed to know if someone is being abducted by white supremacist psychos who will murder them or if they are real federal law enforcement agents?
Im done talking! I just need to get this out: During the Pandemic, we had to put up with people acting like their liberty, freedom and rights were being violated.. Protests were everywhere. What they saw as a fascist dictator ripping up the Constitution, was a fedeeral health agency tasked with protecting the health of Amerucan citizens recommending extremely common sense effort to safe people with the virus from getting their spittie or snot on grandma and killing her.
The same people who were ready to go to war over being asked to please cover their face holes when coughing/sneezing so the virus doesn’t spread, killing a million Americans, including healthy adults and children. Oh wait, that did happen. And niqpw they have fabric over their entire face after
Nicolae Viorel Butler is a Capitol Hill reporter focusing on immugration news and policy. He actually visited CECOT in El Salvador. I found his reporting on a Substack called Migrant Insider. Check it out, subscribe, and reward someone for their showing some humanity/kindness at a time when ICE deported at least 70 US citizens.
Maybe it’ll spread.
I just had a terrible thought! I’m sharing because I shouldn’t have to shoulder this nightmare fuel alone. The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can deport people to countries they’ve never been to. Sudan was on the list of countries the administration they had deals with.
Now combine the reality that innocent migrants are going to be dropped in the middle of dangerous countries with no money, no documentation —NOTHING. The woman who was brought into thecU.S. by her parents as a baby when they left Thailand is proof. Thailand would’ve been bad enough since shed never been there, didn’t know anyone, or speak the language.
Instead, they deported her to Laos, where she was handed to the military was still staying in the place they took her to because she knew NO ONE, didn’t speak the language, had no money, and ICE never returned her documents so she had no ID. I’m getting off track here, but here but she was worried about getting a job in order to get acolace tovkive and to eat in that predicament. If it interests you, you can get more details about the woman who had only ever known life in the US being deported to Laos.
I know, I knew. You’re hear to find out how the heck ICE deported at least 70 US citizens and there’s not a widespread freakout. Same!
ICE Deported at Least 70 US Citizens
WASHINGTON — A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirms what immigrant advocates have long warned: ICE has deported American citizens.
Between 2015 and 2020, ICE deported at least 70 people who were U.S. citizens, according to the GAO. That’s not just a bureaucratic mistake — it’s a constitutional violation.
U.S. citizens cannot be deported under civil immigration law. Yet GAO found that ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lack the records to even know how many people they may have deported in error.
“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens.”
In total, the watchdog found that ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70 — all of whom may have been legally untouchable by immigration enforcement.
And the actual number could be much higher.
“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens,” the GAO concluded.
Training Gaps, Broken Databases, and Zero Accountability
According to the report, ICE’s own systems — both human and digital — are fundamentally flawed.
First, ICE’s internal training is a mess. Officers are technically required to consult with supervisors before questioning someone who claims to be a citizen. But ICE’s training materials contradict that rule, telling officers they can act alone — a gap that leaves life-altering decisions in the hands of under-trained agents.
Second, ICE’s data infrastructure makes misidentification permanent. Officers are supposed to document citizenship investigations, but they aren’t required to update a person’s status in ICE databases, even after confirming U.S. citizenship.
The result: people who are U.S. citizens can stay marked as “removable” in ICE’s system indefinitely.
Thousands Wrongly Targeted, Some Detained for Years
A separate analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that between 2002 and 2017, ICE wrongly flagged at least 2,840 U.S. citizens as potentially deportable. At least 214 of those Americans were taken into ICE custody.
In the most harrowing case, Davino Watson, a New York-born citizen, was detained for three years in an Alabama immigration jail. He had no lawyer and was forced to prove his citizenship status to the government alone. When he finally got out, an appeals court ruled he wasn’t owed a dime — the statute of limitations had expired.
A Pattern of Profiling
Underlying these errors is a deeper problem: racial profiling.
Both ICE and CBP have long been documented engaging in discriminatory enforcement practices, disproportionately targeting people of color. As a result, Black and brown U.S. citizens are more likely to be stopped, arrested, or even deported — despite having every legal right to remain.
Without access to free legal counsel — a protection immigrants are not guaranteed — many citizens caught up in the system are left defenseless.
Mistakes ICE Refuses to Fix
What’s perhaps most disturbing is the lack of systemic response. ICE has not implemented a reliable system to track and correct its mistakes. Officers continue to make arrests based on outdated records. Supervisors are often left out of citizenship investigations. And there are no effective safeguards to stop this from happening again.
The result? A system that treats constitutional rights as optional — and a deportation machine that can’t (or won’t) tell the difference between an immigrant and an American.
This article was originally published on Migrant Insider and republished here, with permission.
Unlike other third-party content published on AntifaHQ, this is not published under a Creative Connons License. Do not republish it without first contacting the reporter for permission.
