While many Americans are pushing for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to deport more illegal aliens, some citizens of the United States have been deported mistakenly.
U.S. citizens legally cannot be detained nor deported by immigration authorities, but in recent years, it has been occurring with greater frequency.
The Christian Science Monitor cited a 2011 study that estimated about 1 percent each year of those banished are American citizens. Between 2003 and 2012, that is about 20,000 people.
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Here are five cases in which a citizen of the United States was mistakenly deported:
1. Jakadrien Turner, a 15-year-old Dallas teenager, ran away from home and was arrested for shoplifting. After providing a false name to immigration officials, Turner was deported to Colombia for eight months even though she did not speak Spanish. She was reunited with her family after two years in 2012.
2. A mentally disabled man named Pedro Guzman was deported in 2007 to Tijuana, Mexico. Guzman was born in this country, but he was illiterate. He spent months on Mexican streets.
3. Andres Robles Gonzalez became a citizen when his father was naturalized in 2002. In 2008, Gonzalez was sent to Mexico and was not permitted to return to the United States until 2011. The federal government paid $350,000 in reparations.
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4. Mark Lyttle was deported three times and nearly a fourth. Suffering from a mental disability, Lyttle was deported to Mexico originally. Mexican officials then sent him to Honduras, and he was later removed to Guatemala. After bouncing between shelters and prisons for four months, Lyttle finally returned to the United States, but Atlanta airport officials mistakenly tried to send him away again,
according to Think Progress.
5. Diane Williams, who has a white and Native American heritage, was deported to Honduras after finishing a prostitution sentence in Texas under a fake name. Williams claimed she was pressured by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to waive her right of judicial review.