Pinay wants compensation from US over attempted deportation

By Steve Angeles, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau

Posted at 11/21/2013 2:19 PM | Updated as of 11/22/2013 9:38 AM
LOS ANGELES - It's a lawsuit three years in the making. Philippine-born Sharon Arlanza Yost is suing the US government for attempting to deport her despite being a lawful US citizen.
"What we're hoping is she can receive compensation for the harm she suffered and so, you can never give someone back the time that they spent locked up. The least she can receive some compensation for that harm and two, we also hope this has impact of making ICE officials more conscious," said Matt Adams, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project of the National Lawyers Guild.
The problems began in 2010 when Yost pled guilty to a misdemeanor drug possession charge. While lawyers said she had already served her original punishment, immigration officers eventually came to her San Diego home in May of 2011 to deport her.
Yost, now 33 years old, had been a US citizen since 1993 after her mother married a US Navy man.
Despite producing proper documents, she was held in detention for nearly seven months.
"They basically just blew that off. The next 7 months she was locked up while trying to prove to them that she's a US citizen," Adams said.
He added, "They didn't believe her so they put her in front of an immigration judge and the immigration judge said there's something funny here, you guys need to figure this out and the ICE response was make her file an application to prove she's a US citizen and all along she's locked up."
Yost sought help from the National Lawyers Guild earlier this year and filed her lawsuit last month.
The NLG said they have handled similar cases in the past.
Despite drug convictions as deportable offenses for non-citizens, US citizens cannot be deported.
They believe part of the problem may stem from the broken immigration system, which can at times encourage immigration officers to actively seek deportable people.
"That's why we encourage people to get their citizenship so that they will have more stability that they'll be able to have greater opportunity as far as petitions and they won't be in jeopardy or lose their status if they make a mistake or a crime," Adams said.
Before her time in prison, Yost was a college student looking for a job, but suffering from a few health problems.
Reports said Yost is seeking as much as $2 million in damages.
"To make it worse she suffered from diabetes, she was exacerbated by her time in detention so it was a really emotional and traumatic experience for her," he said.
Yost is not yet addressing the media.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services has not responded to media. They are expected to respond to Yost's lawsuit by December.

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