Leroy wrote:
Wait...they are deporting citizens?
Or illegal immigrants? And if they were illegal immigrants, how did they vote? I must be missing something here.
The article provides these details.
Joe Shlabotnik wrote:
These are Iraqi Christians who settled here a decade or more ago but never went through the citizenship process. I assume they let their visas lapse.
No, they have criminal records:
Quote:
The immigration authorities give the same explanation they have given for the arrests of tens of thousands of Latinos and other immigrants without legal status since Mr. Trump took office: These people, too, are what the government refers to as “criminal aliens.”
Quote:
Mr. Hamama, who arrived in the United States from Baghdad when he was 11, was convicted of a weapons possession charge after he flashed an unloaded gun during a road-rage confrontation with another driver in 1988. He was ordered deported in 1994.
Quote:
Mr. Konja, who goes by Nick, fled Iraq with his family at age 15, and later served 22 years in federal prison for selling cocaine. His green card was revoked, but since he could not be deported, he was able to stay, rise up the ranks at a chain of tobacco stores called Wild Bill’s, become engaged and buy a house.
Quote:
Mr. Ali’s family fled Iraq in the early 1990s after his father, an army officer, defied an order from Saddam Hussein. He lost his green card after breaking into a car as a teenager.