Family of deported man sues the U.S.
The family of an American citizen who disappeared after apparently being mistakenly deported to Tijuana a month ago has filed suit asking the U.S. government to help find him.
Pedro Guzman, 29, a Lancaster construction worker, is developmentally disabled and penniless, and he hasn't been heard from since May 11, said his family at a news conference in Los Angeles on Monday.
His mother, Maria Carbajal, said she spent the last month in Tijuana living out of her car while searching in vain for her son. She said neither the U.S. nor the Mexican government has helped in her search for him.
"I've done a lot," she said, "and I haven't found him."
In a statement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they deport a person only "when all available credible evidence suggests the person is an alien. That process was followed here and ICE has no reason to believe that it improperly removed Pedro Guzman."
The family disagrees.
"I feel my government has let me down. I know it has failed him as well," said younger brother Michael Guzman, 28. "All we want is our brother back."
Guzman was born in Los Angeles, his family said. He is light-skinned and 6 feet 5. He speaks English and Spanish, made it through the 10th grade and has a driver's license.
But his family said he cannot read or write, gets lost easily and, although he does not appear mentally impaired, can be taciturn and suspicious of strangers.
The situation began when Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested Guzman for trespassing at an airplane junkyard in Lancaster.
His mother said he was sentenced in April to 120 days in jail, but that about a month later, he called to say he had been deported to Tijuana and didn't know why.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a partner in the suit, criticized the Sheriff's Department for acting, it said, as de facto immigration agents.
"Because they did so in this case, there's a man lost in Mexico," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California.
Steve Whitmore, a Sheriff's Department spokesman, said the department hadn't reviewed the lawsuit and had no comment on its specifics.
But he denied that deputies act as federal immigration agents. He said deputies interview foreign-born jail inmates before their release and turn the information over to the immigration agency.
