US citizens can be held for three years on the basis of nothing whatsoever…

US citizens can be held for three years on the basis of nothing whatsoever… August 5, 2017

…and then be denied compensation by Appeal Courts. All they have to do is breathe oxygen while being brown and it’s perfectly fine for the state to do that:

Davino Watson told the immigration officers that he was a U.S. citizen. He told jail officials that he was a U.S. citizen. He told a judge. He repeated it again and again.

There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. Watson, who was 23 and didn’t have a high school diploma when he entered ICE custody, didn’t have a lawyer of his own. So he hand-wrote a letter to immigration officers, attaching his father’s naturalization certificate, and kept repeating his status to anyone who would listen.

Still, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation. Deportation proceedings continued for another year.

Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing “regrettable failures of the government.”

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is “disturbing,” the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.

Because man was made for the law, not the law for man. And besides: brown, so who cares? He should consider himself lucky for not being shot in cold blood like Philando Castile.


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