LIn June, federal agents confiscated a self-proclaimed U.S. citizen’s paperwork and drove him to Mexico under a controversial CDC order ostensibly intended to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, The Daily Beast has learned. And despite a series of executive actions reflecting the Trump-era immigration policy, newly inaugurated President Joe Biden enforced this order, and his government has given no clear indication that he plans to end it any time soon.
Each piece of evidence indicates that Óscar Luis Cortes García was born in May 1991 in Los Angeles, California. When he was still a baby, his mother decided to return to her hometown in the state of Colima in Mexico, Cortes recently explained. He spent the best part of the next two decades in Mexico, but he stuck to the idea that he would one day live in the United States.
‘They did not even try, they threw him out so quickly.”
– Angélica García
When the coronavirus pandemic hit all the work in his city, he decided to finally take the plunge and undertake the journey, he said. But he had no idea of U.S. immigration and border legislation or a passport when he first tried to enter the country.
“I had so little information, what could I do,” Cortes told The Daily Beast. ‘I have no resources to go to a consulate. They later told me that consulates are free, but I did not know that then. ”
According to Cortes, thinking that a citizen would be allowed anywhere along the border, he crossed between official ports of entry.
Shortly afterwards, Cortes was arrested along with a group of undocumented migrants. He thought he might be able to present his identity documents if he was taken to a processing center. Instead, he is under the CDC Title 42 Order, which authorizes U.S. immigration personnel to immediately dismiss people without valid entry documents, fingerprint and expel them immediately, even if they intended to apply for asylum.
The law on which it is based is not strict immigration, but a social health measure intended to stop the introduction of communicable diseases in the United States. Yet it provided an easy way for the Trump administration to advance its anti-asylum agenda: more than 380,000 evictions took place under this authority, according to CBP’s own data.
After Cortes’ first unsuccessful attempt, his aunt Angélica García – an American citizen living in California – convinced him to go through an official port and went to Mexico to accompany him as he went through. “He does not speak very well, he is very shy, he does not look good,” she told The Daily Beast. Nevertheless, according to the two, they thought that his possession of a birth certificate, a social security card and a baptismal certificate would be more than enough.
Instead, Cortes explained, when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents realized he had been suspended before, he was taken to a separate area and aggressively questioned about his documents. “They immediately said that the newspapers were not mine, and that they were going to charge me with identity theft,” Cortes said. “I said, ‘Go ahead, do it, the documents are mine.’ ‘”
Although Cortes asked to be arrested so that his claims could be further evaluated, he was suspended again, but not before agents seized all his documents.
This report was backed up by García, who claims she was let through but herself threatened criminal prosecution when she intervened on his behalf and tried to show the agents photos of Cortes’ baptism. ‘[An agent] came out and said, ‘You know, I can accuse you of smuggling people into the country illegally.’ “I was not scared, because I knew I was not doing anything wrong,” she said.
CBP spokesman Matthew Dyman told The Daily Beast that the agency’s record of the meeting “counteracts the story you are going to work against”. According to Dyman, Cortes “was unable to provide specific details about the birth certificate submitted to the CBP officer, nor could he answer any of the questions about his alleged birth in the US.” Dyman also claims that both Cortes and García were suspended and questioned why Cortes would believe that as a US citizen he could cross the border between ports of entry.
While a U.S. citizenship claim does not automatically enable people to enter the country, federal policies require immigration agents to investigate potential credible citizenship claims of those in custody. A 2015 ICE policy on the subject issued via a record request states that an assessment of a credible claim to citizenship must include a factual investigation and a legal analysis and an investigation of all available DHS should include. [Department of Homeland Security] data systems and any other reasonable means at the disposal of the officer. Although CBP’s policy guidelines are not similarly public, they are likely to be substantially similar; CBP press releases noted that field staff are ‘trained in document analysis’.
Both Cortes and García dispute that any serious attempt was made to determine the validity of his claim.
“They did not even try, they threw him out so quickly. It was a matter of – I do not even know if it was an hour, ‘said García.
Cortes added that he started handcuffing when he was handcuffed. “In English, they said to me, ‘What’s the matter? and I said, ‘At least give me back my papers,’ and it was, ‘No, no, we’ll get you out of here.’ They handcuffed me, and I could not even talk to my aunt. ‘
‘I was sick of it, I felt very depressed. It’s a very violent city, and I basically lived on the street.”
Regarding the restoration of documentation, CBP spokesman Dyman said he “proposes to investigate how to replace U.S. birth certificates if an original article is lost.” The State Department referred questions about Cortes’ situation to DHS, while a Biden White House spokesman told The Daily Beast that the 42nd title was being reviewed by the new government.
“We want to be able to start at the border again and process it again,” the White House spokesman added. “However, we are in a pandemic. And so, combined with the chaos and things that have been done to our immigration policies over the past four years, we are not in a place where we can just turn a switch and things can be as before. . ”
Since his second suspension, Cortes has been assisted by the cross-border group of legal and social services, Al Otro Lado, which is trying to get him new proof of citizenship. He stayed in Tijuana for about five months in the hope that the process would be resolved quickly, but eventually returned to his mother’s hometown.
‘I was sick of it, I felt very depressed. It’s a very violent city, and I basically lived on the streets, ‘he said.
According to Nicole Ramos, Cortes’ lawyer at Al Otro Lado, he did not go to the consulate because they currently have little official evidence that he is a US citizen. But Cortes and his aunt have copies of some vaccination reports, baptisms and hospital papers, which were checked by The Daily Beast (the most important original articles were taken by CBP, they claim). An employee of the San Antonio de Padua Catholic Church in Los Angeles confirmed this week that the priest who was baptized as Cortes worked there in 1991. ‘ A spokesman for the LAC-USC Medical Center told The Daily Beast the medical records confirmed the authenticity of the signature on a letter dated a few days after Cortes’ birth, in which he said he was born there. The church and the hospital would not specifically testify that Cortes passed through their facilities.
The initial Title 42 order was apparently intended to protect U.S. immigration authorities and border communities from the coronavirus pandemic, but was issued over the objections of CDC staff members, some of whom refused to sign. Leading public health experts have disputed that there is a health reasoning for the policy, and that its use has been considered illegal by the United Nations. A federal judge has stopped the government from expelling unaccompanied minors under the order, but the decision was overturned last week by a panel of DC circuit courts appointed by Trump. (The Biden government has said it does not intend to evict minors.)
The Washington Post reported this week that the Mexican government has begun accepting children and families who have been evicted, but is still taking only adults. Meanwhile, an executive order signed by President Biden on February 2 ordered the CDC and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, in consultation with DHS, to “immediately review and determine whether termination, dissolution or change of the order was justified, but left the policy unchanged, with no specific timeline for the evaluation.
Cortes now feels as if he was just not prepared – but also determined to try again if he is able.
“I did not know anything about the laws, you know,” he said. “About how they should protect you.”