Pedro Guzman's Return
Wrongly deported to Mexico, a developmentally disabled man is found safe
By DANIEL HERNANDEZ
Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - 9:30 pm
EIGHTY-NINE DAYS AFTER HE WAS DEPORTED from the Los Angeles County jail system to Tijuana, mentally troubled U.S. citizen Pedro Guzman returned to his home in Lancaster this week, shivering, stuttering and re-igniting a host of uncomfortable questions for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).Guzman appeared at the U.S. border crossing at Calexico late Sunday night, where he was detained on a probation warrant. He was moved to the downtown L.A. jail, and then to the Lancaster jail. There, Superior Court Judge Carlos Chung ordered him released on August 7. That Tuesday afternoon, Pedro Guzman was finally resting at his brother Juan Carlos Chabes’ home on a flat stretch of the Antelope Valley while his mother, Maria Carbajal, and brother Michael Guzman faced a frenetic band of news reporters at the headquarters of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in the Belmont area near downtown.
It was a chaotic news conference, as reporters scrambled for details of how Pedro Guzman made it home and why he was deported to Mexico in the first place. Mark Rosenbaum, the ACLU’s legal director, hammered away at the feds, using damning, emotional language to fault the government for deporting Guzman by using nothing short of racial profiling.
“This government deported Pedro Guzman because of his skin color, did not examine or review his documents stating that he was born in California because of his skin color, did not bother to comfort this family when he was found because of his skin color,” Rosenbaum said.
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