Sergio Carrillo, 40, will be receiving monetary compensation from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency for getting arrested despite being a U.S. citizen. The incident occurred July 25th, 2016 in front of a Home Depot in Rialto, California.
From the moment he got arrested, Carrillo showed ICE agents his American passport and told them he was a citizen since 1994. They paid him no mind and took him to the holding center in Adelanto, California after visiting various other installations.
Carrillo, who was born in Tijuana, Mexico, spent three days in jail before his attorney presented Carrillo’s American passport to authorities. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Carrillo’s attorneys sued ICE for violating their federal policy.
They also sued for racial profiling, saying ICE agents determined Carrillo was undocumented because he looks Mexican. Carrillo, his attorneys, and the ACLU won the case, granting Carrillo $20,000 for the trauma he had to withstand at the hands of ICE agents.
“At the time, ICE broke with its own policy that states a claim of citizenship by an arrestee must be promptly investigated,” said a spokesperson of the ACLU. “Instead, they ignored Carrillo’s pleas to check his citizenship status. This is every immigrant’s nightmare, even if they have citizenship.”
According to the L.A. Times, “ICE has wrongly identified at least 2,840 United States citizens as possibly eligible for deportation, and at least 214 of them were taken into custody for some period of time.”
This article was inspired by MundoHispanico // Gobierno pagará a mexicano que fue arrestado por inmigración a pesar de tener ciudadanía