I'm right again dot com

An Unincorporated Division of the Anonymous Anything Society     5/8/2013


CAUGHT IN THE MAW OF THE DEPORTATION MACHINE: How a clerical error sent a U.S. Citizen on a four month tour of jails in Mexico and Central America.

    I was alerted to this item by an almost unbelievable, terrifying  story in the April 29th. 2013 issue of New Yorker Magazine. I Googled for more information and came up with an article by Jaqueline Stevens, Ph.D and Associate Professor, University of California, published in the Whittington Post. With all of the current talk about deportations, I was immediately fascinated.

    Mark Lyttle was born 35 years ago in North Carolina. Orphaned, he was diagnosed at any early age of being diabetic and suffering from various bipolar disorders. He may have some form of autism. Other than his name, he cannot write and he barely can read. (Hold that thought.)

     His educational and employment history is full of blank spots. From time to time he worked for many fast food concerns, but never for very long.

     Since he has a slight brown hue to his skin, his birth parentage is thought to have been, at least in part, oriental and/or latino. He was adopted, along with two younger brothers and a sister, at age seven by Thomas and Jeanne Lyttle, U.S. Citizens of Rowan County, North Carolina. Thomas died a year later. In 2008, Jeanne Lyttle booked Mark into Cherry Hospital, a North Carolina Psychiatric facility.

    Earlier that year he had been convicted of inappropriately touching a female employee at another facility - a misdemeanor, carrying a 100-day sentence.  Mark was subsequently booked into Neuse Correctional Institution, a minimum-security state facility in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

    It was there where his odyssey took a fateful and disastrous turn. An intake clerk there put "Oriental" in the blank for ethnicity and "Mexico" under place of birth and Citizenship as "Alien," ignoring all other records handed down to that institution. Furthermore, she changed his name to Jose' Thomas. Keep in mind that his adoptive mother is named Jeanne and his late adoptive father' first name was Thomas. The lines for "Birth Date" and "Place of Birth" were left blank.

     As you might gather later on, he is fortunate he did not end up in China.

    "Bang," or since the computers at Neuse Correctional Institution alerted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that an "alien" was caught in their web, "Zap," would be more appropriate, ICE issued an administrative removal order.

    ICE Agent Dashanta Faucette failed to do a standard criminal history check when she interviewed him, which would have revealed his U.S. Citizenship, but instead presented him with a handwritten affidavit she had constructed, repeating and affirming the copy-cat mistakes. She apparently paid no attention when the "alien" signed it as he had been taught to do as "Mark Lyttle," and not Jose' Thomas. She took his fingerprints, but checked only for the fictitious Jose' Thomas, who now ostensibly had a record. A check for Mark Lyttle would have revealed his true identity.

    Dashanta swears he admitted orally that his name was Jose' Thomas and was born in Mexico. He now says he never did that. Who knows, perhaps he imagined his disability checks would follow him and he would end up by being on a permanent Cancun vacation. No matter, Mark was set for a final deportation hearing.  Dashanta has since gotten a promotion.

    Even then, a Federal Judge could have saved Lyttle further travail.  When he appeared before Judge William A. Cassidy along with 29 other men in a mass deportation conducted by televidio, there was a note in the records provided the judge stating that Lyttle was claiming to be a U.S. Citizen. Cassidy ignored it, and instead told Lyttle, "Because of your crime, you may need special permission if you ever wish to return to the United States." Prior to be appointed to the bench, Cassidy had been an Immigration and Naturalization Service Prosecutor.

    Why didn't Mark call his mother or siblings? They had moved to Kentucky so that Mark's mother could help care for his brother's child while his brother "Tommy" served a tour in Iraq, and Mark had lost all records of their address and telephone number. I can only speculate about why they had failed to keep adequate track of Mark. He had a long record of stays in mental institutions, jails and group homes.

    On August 8th, 2008, Mark Lyttle was forced to cross a bridge from Hildalgo, Texas to Reynosa, Mexico. Almost completely unable to communicate in Spanish, Mexico deported him to Honduras (?) where a female guard pointed a gun in his face and told him that she hated Gringos. He has no memory of how or why he got out, but remembered he would have starved had not a gangster's wife brought him a plate of food. 

    He says he walked all the way to El Salvador, begging for food and drink. He doesn't remember how he got to Guatemala City, but an English speaking policeman found him on a park bench in April of 2009 and took him to the U.S. Embassy.

    There, a conscientious vice-consul, Maria Alverado, upon hearing his accent, made some phone calls. She  located his brother, Staff Sergeant Thomas Lyttle at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, who identified Mark by describing a unique mark near his eye and FAXing them a copy of Mark's birth certificate. (Yes, one had existed all along, but no one had checked). The Embassy issued him a passport under his real name and once his family sent money for clothing and a plane ticket, he was on his way home, via Atlanta. Well almost.

    Once ICE officials screened him upon arrival in Atlanta, they found he had been deported under the name Jose'
Thomas and wrongly assumed his new passport was fraudulent without checking with either the Embassy in Guatemala City or the State Department. They arrested him again, put him in jail and got an order for expedited deportation. When the jet landed in Kentucky without Mark, his family hired an attorney in Atlanta who located him and by stirring up a media storm, persuaded ICE to finally release him.

    Despite all advice to the contrary, Mark settled out of court with ICE for a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars and ICE admitted no wrongdoing

73,

Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller

P.S. It occurred to me to wonder why Mexico deported him to Honduras, when the entire country of Guatemala lies between Mexico and Honduras? I probably will never know the answer to that.

Wish to comment? Phil can be reached at:  K7OS (at) msn (dot) com


Archive: I am indebted to Jim Bromley of Glendale, Arizona, who has begun an archive of what I consider my best blogs.  They will be added to as I review them, plus contain another link to the current essay.   Click: http://www.arizona-AM.net/K7OS