PLEA TO OBAMA LEADS TO ICE ARREST

PLEA TO OBAMA LEADS TO ICE ARREST
A reader linked to this in the comments and it's worth bumping up to its own post. The New York Times' Nina Bernstein reports on a couple - a white US citizen woman and her Cameroon national hu*****and - who have been battling to prevent the hu*****and from being deported. Bernstein reported earlier in the week on the effective racial profiling USCIS is using to target mixed race couples in marriage-based green card cases - well worth reading if you have not already read the piece.

Caroline Jamieson wrote to President Obama pleading with the President to help with her hu*****and's case. The White House forwarded the case to USCIS to check further and the agency instead forwarded the letter to ICE to pick up the hu*****and and put him in deportation proceedings. The arrest was not a mere coincidence - the ICE officers specifically asked Hervé Fonkou Takoulo if he wrote a letter to the President. When he acknowledged his wife had, he was handcuffed and sent to jail to await deportation.

ICE claims it does not use letters to elected officials as investigative leads and it also claims to be focusing on criminal aliens. But it was not until the Times started asking questions that Mr. Takoulo was released (albeit with an ankle bracelet monitor).

The fact that Mr. Takoulo, an engineer, was even facing removal is troubling. He applied for political asylum and was denied. He was ordered deported after that. He married his wife five years ago and ICE has the authority to reopen the case to allow for Mrs. Jamieson to apply for her hu*****and's green card. The agency has so far refused and has not even considered the question of whether the marriage is genuine.