SEATTLE — A U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement attorney forged a document in an
attempt to deport an immigrant seeking to stay in the country with his wife and
children, according to a new lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Seattle U.S. District Court,
seeks $500,000 in damages for Ignacio Lanuza-Torres because the alleged forgery
cost him years of courtroom battles. Lanuza-Torres is now a legal U.S.
resident.
According to the lawsuit, Lanuza-Torres entered the country
illegally from Mexico in 1996, settling in Seattle thereafter. In 2008, he
pleaded guilty to unlawfully displaying a weapon after handling a friend's
pistol at a party, and he was put in removal proceedings by ICE.
The following year, Lanuza-Torres married his girlfriend, an
American citizen, and sought to have his removal canceled because of the
marriage and because he had also met the stipulation of being in the country
continuously for 10 years.
But in court, ICE assistant chief counsel Jonathan M. Love said
Lanuza-Torres had voluntarily given up his right to appear before an
immigration judge after he was apprehended by Border Patrol agents in 2000.
The government argued that because Lanuza-Torres had left the
U.S. to visit Mexico about five times and because he gave up his right to
appear before a judge, his appeal to cancel his removal should be rejected.
In Border Patrol custody, Love said, Lanuza-Torres had signed a
document declining to appear before an immigration judge to argue his case. The
document provided evidence that Lanuza-Torres had not been in the country
continuously for 10 years. Love entered the document as evidence a week after
making his statement in court.
Immigration Judge Kenneth Josephson accepted the form as
evidence and ordered Lanuza-Torres deported.
As Lanuza-Torres appealed, his attorney at the time, Hilary Han,
noticed something off about the evidence.
The form Love submitted had a Department of
Homeland Security header, even though it was dated Jan. 13,
2000 — nearly 20 months before the department was created in response to the
Sept. 11 attacks. The form also had the signature of ICE officer Anthony Dodd,
who processed Lanuza in Seattle in 2008. The form was supposed to date to 2000
and originate from the U.S.-Mexico border.
"You're left in shock. You don't know why he did it. You
don't know what he had against me or what happened," Lanuza-Torres said in
Spanish, adding "besides getting angry, you get sad. It feels like I was
stabbed in the back."
Here is "someone who blatantly forged a document in order
to deprive someone of their only chance to stay here in the United States with
their family, deprive them of their only chance to exercise their rights under
the law," said Matt Adams, an attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights
Project and Lanuza-Torres' current attorney.
ICE spokesman Andrew Munoz said an internal review has been
launched.
"Any unlawful conduct by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement's (ICE) employees is inconsistent with our agency values and the
high standards to which we hold our employees. We take all allegations of
misconduct seriously," Munoz said, declining to comment further because of
the pending lawsuit.
Reached by phone Thursday, Love said he was not aware of the
lawsuit. Asked if he remembered the Lanuza-Torres case, he said he did not.
Besides seeking damages, Adams has filed complaints with the
Homeland Security inspector general, urging a review of all cases Love handled.
-- The Associated Press