Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Monica Castro (photo: George Gongora, Corpus Christi Caller-Times)
Monica Castro thought she had a deal. In exchange for telling the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) service about the whereabouts of her daughter’s father, Omar Gallardo, an illegal immigrant whose violent behavior caused Castro to flee her home in December 2003, federal agents were supposed to help the woman recover one-year-old Rosa.
Instead, agents arrested the father and daughter and deported both of them—less than 12 hours later—even though Rosa was an American citizen by birth. They claimed that because Gallardo was the father, he had equal custody and the right to take the child with him to Mexico. In the few hours available to her, Castro found a lawyer who tried to obtain a custody order, but there was not enough time because only one bus a day takes undocumented immigrants from Lubbock, Texas, to Mexico and the Border Patrol wanted to make sure Gallardo was on it. Castro then spent three years trying to get her daughter brought back to the U.S.
The fourth-generation American sued the CBP for its mistake, but lost her case, twice. The second time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected Castro’s arguments, while stating in the majority opinion that the justices did not “condone the Border Patrol’s actions or the choices it made.”
Castro’s lawyers are now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Family Fight, Border Patrol Raid, Baby De ported (by Adam Liptak, New York Times)
Mother Sues over Removal of Child (by Denise Malan, Corpus Christi Caller-Times)
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