July 20, 2025
Shameless
You probably know that I’m not a Trump fan. The guy is a pig. The guy is incompetent. He is anti-science, any science; he is only after enrichment for himself. Do you think he is spending any time thinking about us? No way, it’s all about him. He has legitimate power with the Congress; he could pass common-sense legislation, but he doesn’t even try, except for the big ugly. The only guy on the planet that is possibly happy that Trump arrived is George W Bush. Trump makes Bush look like one of the greats. Remember, Bus cut taxes and invaded Iraq at the same time. What could go wrong with that? We are still paying that one off.
And now an ICE story that is hard to believe, but when you have the Trump-appointed Kristi Noem in charge, anything is possible.
An 82 year old man was taken by ICE at a green card replacement appointment. His family was never informed where he was or how to get ahold of him until he was in a foreign hospital... despite the fact that he was a permanent legal resident of the US.
Luis Leon came to the US 38 years ago.
He had been tortured in his native Chile by the administration of the dictator Augusto Pinochet. The US gave him political asylum and he came legally to the United States in 1987.
Luis built a life here in the US. He worked at a leather manufacturing plant, raised four kids, and eventually retired.
He’s well-loved in his neighborhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He likes to garden and fish and do small repairs for the neighbors.
In June he lost his wallet, which had his green card in it.
No problem. Luis and his wife made an appointment to get it replaced.
But when they arrived for the appointment, Luis was handcuffed and taken away, and his wife was held for ten hours until her granddaughter showed up to get her.
His family couldn’t find him for a full month. The immigration detention tracker never showed him as in ICE custody. Immigration officials had no answers they were willing to give, despite multiple calls. The family called local prisons and hospitals and even morgues but couldn’t find anyone who knew where Luis was.
A relative in Chile called the family yesterday to let them know that 82-year-old Luis was now in a hospital in Guatemala… apparently deported to this country by the US government, though ICE still won’t even confirm that Luis showed up for his green card replacement appointment, let alone that they had him in custody and deported him.
Now that the family has found Luis, ICE says they are “investigating” what happened.
Sometimes when I share these stories, people push back and say something like, “If he was here for all these years, why didn’t he become a citizen.” It’s a really weird and ignorant question for a variety of reasons, but more importantly it’s off topic to this post. So before we change subjects to why someone might not get their US citizenship, let me pose a few counter questions: Do you think legal permanent resident of the US should be taken into custody at what should be a normal administrative appointment? Do you think people should be held with no access to lawyers or family? Should permanent legal residents be deported to a country other than their home country and put in a hospital without ever informing family or legal representation? Because that’s what we’re talking about.
Meanwhile, we have no idea if ICE deported a legal, permanent resident of the United States on purpose or somehow “by accident.”
Certainly since ICE’s tripled quota for arrests they’ve had a lot more “mistakes.” And I’m not just talking about the more famous moments, like “administrative errors” that involve illegally deporting someone to El Salvador.
We also have things like:
* A US marshal being mistakenly detained by ICE.
* ICE apologized for detaining US citizens because it caught them… speaking Spanish.
* ICE claims assaults against agents had increased between 500-700% but then released statistics that showed — despite the huge increase in ICE arresting people — ICE’s own self-reported stats of assaults barely increased at all. Probably because they’ve been arresting people on bogus assault claims and then never charged any of them because it was just an excuse to put bystanders in handcuffs.
* ICE accidentally sent a 15 year old to the Everglades Concentration Camp because they didn’t verify his age or identity.
Meanwhile, Luis — a permanent resident of the US who came here legally, had legal status and doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket — has been taken from his family, kept from legal counsel, deported to a country he has never been from, and put in the hospital.
Why?
Because he lost his wallet.
All the best