An Unsettling Practice

How's this for a real-life horror story? A developmentally delayed American citizen was arrested for a minor crime and "mistakenly" deported to Mexico. From an editorial in today's Los Angeles Times:

Arrested for trespassing at an airplane junkyard, Guzman was questioned while in the custody of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and, perhaps because of his disability, mistaken for an illegal immigrant. He was turned over to immigration authorities, who deported him to Tijuana. He then promptly disappeared. Despite their frantic attempts to find him, Guzman's family has not heard from him since May 11. What that means is that Guzman's trespass has earned him a sentence of banishment and disappearance, a fate common in third-rate dictatorships but abhorred in civilized nations. And the federal government's response has been to evade responsibility and to refuse the family's pleas for help.

This is what happens when the police are expected to act as immigration officials as well as cops. Mr. Guzman was brown, probably Spanish speaking only, and he wasn't carrying a green card. Ergo, he was an illegal and no longer the Sheriff's Department's problem.

And the Feds? Not their problem either, even though Mr. Guzman was born in the United States.

So much for the beacon of liberty claptrap.