Consider first the case of Daniel Ramirez Medina,
whom ICE agents arrested last Friday. Ramirez is a beneficiary of Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed him to remain in the U.S. and work lawfully despite being undocumented. When he explained to ICE agents that he was “legally here” and showed them his DACA work permit, they detained him anyway. At a processing center, Ramirez reiterated that he had a lawful work permit.
“It doesn’t matter,” an agent responded, according
a lawsuit filed on Ramirez’s behalf, “because you weren’t born in this country.” After detaining him, ICE found a justification for his deportation,
alleging that he was a “self-admitted gang member.” Its evidence for this allegation centered around an appeal that Ramirez wrote after arriving at the detention center requesting to be removed from its gang unit. The government said it included the line, “I have gang affiliation with gangs so I wear an orange uniform.” But on Thursday, the
Stranger published a photograph of the appeal—and it clearly shows that Ramirez had written in pencil: “I came in and the officers said I have gang affiliation with gangs so I wear an orange uniform. I do not have a criminal history and I’m not affiliated with any gangs.”
Ramirez’s lawyers allege that ICE officials doctored the document to prove that he belonged to a gang. The words “I came in and the officers said” were clearly erased so that the statement began with the statement “I have gang affiliation.”
“What began, I thought, as a mistake in bringing Daniel in has turned into a bogus operation that is attempting to railroad him and violate the sacred program that the DACA represents,” his lawyer, Mark Rosenbaum,
said on a press call. “It is one of the most serious examples of governmental misconduct that I have come across in my 40 years of practice.”