83 percent of 2013 U.S. deportees never saw a judge

Last Updated on Friday, 5 December 2014, 22:23 by GxMedia

New York, Dec 5 (EFE).- Eighty-three percent of the more than 430,000 people deported from the United States in 2013 did not have a deportation hearing or face an immigration magistrate, the American Civil Liberties Union said.

“Immigration officers acting as prosecutor, judge and deporter” used expedited procedures in the cases of 326,279 of the 438,421 people removed from the country, according to the report.

Under “expedite deportation,” individuals are pressured to sign statements and forms that they may not understand, while officials lie to them about their rights, leading in some cases to the deportation of people who have a legal right to remain in the United States, the ACLU said

The group cited the case of U.S. citizen Maria de la Paz, who was subjected to expedited deportation by a Border Patrol agent who refused to believe that a U.S. citizen could speak only Spanish. The woman spent years in Mexico before she was able to return to the United States.

Many expedited deportations affect people who had lived in the United States for a long time, travel abroad for a short period and are detained and expelled when they attempt to return.

The ACLU report shows that 95 percent of unaccompanied Mexican minors who enter the United States are returned to Mexico without a hearing before an immigration judge.

More than 66,000 unaccompanied Central American minors crossed the Mexico-U.S. border in fiscal year 2014, which ended Sept. 30, joining over 11.3 million undocumented immigrants, most of them Hispanic.

Last month, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that will benefit undocumented immigrants who are the parents of U.S.-born children, provided that they have lived in the country since before Jan. 1, 2010, and do not have criminal records.

The temporary relief includes work permits for some 5 million undocumented immigrants.