A former Marine who served in Afghanistan was nearly deported last month in an apparent mixup involving Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
According to The Washington Post, Jilmar Ramos-Gomez was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and served in the Marines from 2011 and 2014. Now 27, he returned from Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder and still suffers from the affliction.
Gomez was arrested in late November on charges of arson and trespassing after police said he set a fire in a secure area of a hospital in Grand Rapids. He was scheduled to be released Dec. 14 when ICE swooped in and took custody of him.
"I was shocked. Everybody knows that Jilmar is a U.S. citizen and a Marines vet," the family's attorney Richard Kessler said.
"I immediately called ICE and shouted at them. And they called me back and said, kind of, 'Oops, yeah, come and get him.' They didn't say, 'Our bad,' but kind of implied that."
The American Civil Liberties Union is now involved. The group sent a letter to the Kent County Sheriff and Kent County Board of Commissioners this week and demanded an investigation be opened into how an American citizen was marked for possible deportation.
"This terrible incident is the predictable consequence of the Sheriff's Department's decision to volunteer its resources to support ICE's efforts to deport Kent County residents, a policy that the community has repeatedly and persuasively asked the Department to end," the ACLU wrote on its website.
Kent County Undersheriff Chuck DeWitt said the error was on ICE, not his department.
"What we've done thus far is a review of the documents, and the review of the documents thus far have revealed all the policies and procedures were followed," DeWitt said, NPR reported.
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