Big Brother
by Chicher • Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 - 4:23 pmOur friend, The government:
Tagged: Customs Enforcement, Thomas WarziniackImmigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens
FLORENCE, Ariz. — Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he’s never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack’s claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.
On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from McClatchy, produced a birth certificate and after a U.S. senator demanded his release.
“The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes,” Warziniack said in an earlier phone interview from jail. “All I know is that somebody dropped the ball.”
March 31st, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I think if they wanted to deport me to Portugal or Ireland I might go.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Portugal is cool. They are world leaders in alternative energy production. Portugese people that I have known, I liked. Ireland is about to become icebound once again.