Houston Chronicle
By Dylan Baddour
August 31, 2015
According
to media reports, immigration officials at the Texas/Mexico border put a
U.S.-born Texas man behind bars for five days over citizenship
concerns. Now he faces
deportation.
Dr.
Edgar Basaldua has spent years driving daily between his home in
McAllen, Texas, and his private practice in Reynosa, Mexico. The border
crossing was routine, but
on Monday, August 25 something was different.
Even
though Basaldua had social security, a Texas drivers' license, a U.S.
passport and a birth certificate, reported Telemundo, border officials
detained him as he returned
home from work. Then they put him in the Port Isabel Detention Center
where immigrants are held.
"It's traumatic," Basaldua told KGBT TV news. "They call it a detention center—it's really a prison."
Basaldua
told media that officials said they were detaining him until they found
proof he was born in the United States. Problems apparently arose from
Basaldua's dual
Mexican and American citizenship.
"I
don't know if the problem is necessarily that he has dual citizenship,"
Basaldua's attorney, Gregorio Lopez, told Telemundo. "I think that what
immigration officials
will allege is that he is actually not a citizen of the United States."
Immigration
and Customs Enforcement told KGBT they could not comment on the case,
but offered that agents may be less concerned with people using fake
documents, which
are easy to spot, and more concerned with people using real documents
that belong to someone else.
On
Friday, August 28, Lopez secured Basaldua's release from behind bars.
Now the doctor faces deportation if he cannot prove he was born in
Texas. Lopez said removal proceedings
were underway.
Basaldua told KGBT, "I will not renounce my American citizenship. I have been one my whole life."
He
said he hopes to obtain records from the Texas Department of State
Health Services Vital Statistics Unit to prove his place of birth.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment