North Carolina man sues over deportationBy Andria Simmons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A mentally ill North Carolina man is suing the federal government for deporting him to Mexico, where he was left penniless and forced to fend for himself for four months without even the slightest grasp of the Spanish language.
Mark Daniel Lyttle, 33, was deported to Mexico in 2008, although he is an American citizen.
American Civil Liberties Union Mark Daniel Lyttle, 33, was deported to Mexico in 2008, although he is an American citizen.
The ACLU on Wednesday filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mark Lyttle, who settled near Atlanta after returning to the United States last year.
Lyttle's troubles began when he was misidentified as an illegal immigrant in September 2008 while serving a 100-day sentence at a North Carolina prison. He was there on a misdemeanor assault charge for inappropriately touching a female orderly at a psychiatric hospital where he received treatment.
A spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC) said Lyttle reported his place of birth was Mexico City when he was booked into the prison.
"That brought him to the attention of ICE," said Keith Acree, public affairs director for the North Carolina DOC. "When he finished his prison sentence, he ultimately did get deported.
A spokesperson for ICE did not respond by press time to requests for comment on the lawsuit Tuesday and Wednesday.
Lawyers for Lyttle claim he had trouble communicating because he has several problems that rendered him "mentally disabled," including bipolar disorder, a history of physical abuse and emotional problems. Lyttle and three of his siblings were removed from their biological parents' home when he was 7 and placed in foster care. They were eventually adopted by a Rowan County, N.C. , family. As a teenager, Lyttle was institutionalized several times at various psychiatric hospitals.
Bureaucracy bungled
ICE agents investigating Lyttle's immigration status searched criminal and other databases which showed Lyttle had a Social Security number and was a U.S. citizen, according to the lawsuit.
However, Lyttle signed several documents that cemented his impending deportation, including an acknowledgment that he was a citizen of Mexico and an agreement to be voluntarily removed to Mexico. Lyttle said he didn't understand the paperwork and he was confused because he is bipolar.
While he is of Puerto Rican descent, Lyttle was born in Rowan County, N.C., Aug. 2, 1977, and had never traveled outside of the United States before he was deported.
"They didn't believe anything I was saying and I told them numerous times I was an American citizen," Lyttle said.
Lyttle's lawyers claim he was coerced into approving the documents.
After Lyttle's prison term expired on Oct. 28, 2008, he was transferred to ICE custody and spent six weeks at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. He went before an immigration judge on Dec. 9, 2008. The judge ordered Lyttle to be removed to Mexico.
Lyttle was put on a plane to Hidalgo, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2008, and dropped off at the Mexican border. Authorities sent him packing with $5 in his pocket and nothing but a prison-issued jumpsuit on his back.
Relatives say they were never notified of what happened to Lyttle after he left prison.
"It was like he vanished, and for a couple Christmases and holidays I wondered where he was at and why he wouldn't contact me," said Lyttle's brother, David Lyttle, reached by phone Tuesday at his home in Conway, S.C. "Something wasn't right and I couldn't put my finger on it."
In exile
Lyttle spent eight days begging and sleeping on the streets before he tried to re-enter the country. However, he was rebuffed by border patrol agents who searched their computerized database and found his immigration status to be that of a "prior deported alien," according to the lawsuit.
Lyttle says he spent the next four months on an odyssey through Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. He alternated between homelessness, living in shelters and incarceration in foreign jails. He did not remember his relatives' phone numbers, which he usually kept written down in his wallet, according to his brother.
Because Lyttle lacked proper identification, Mexican officials deported him to Honduras. Honduran officials held Lyttle in an immigration camp, then tossed him in jail, and finally shipped him off to Guatemala.
He finally convinced a U.S. embassy official in Guatemala to contact his two brothers who were serving in the U.S. military. Thanks to the efforts of his brothers and the embassy official, a passport was issued to him within 24 hours.
Yet even after making arrangements to return to the United States, Lyttle was re-arrested at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and detained for six more days. Then, in a motion to terminate deportation efforts, the Department of Homeland Security finally acknowledged that Lyttle was "not a Mexican citizen, and, in fact, is a citizen of the United States."
Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of political science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., researches the deportation of American citizens. She said Lyttle's case is similar to others she has seen, where someone in a legally fragile position coming out of prison is somehow diverted into the immigration system.
"They don't have contact with their families, and they get thrown into detention centers in the middle of nowhere," Stevens said. "There is no requirement for a bond hearing there. So people just get fed up with being locked up for so long and figure the only way I am going to get out of here is if they sign this paper saying I'm deportable."
Lyttle settled in Griffin, Ga., and works as a landscaper now, but it he says he still has nightmares about his ordeal.
"They took my freedom from me, they took my dignity from me," Lyttle said. "I'm going to do to them what they did to me."
The lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia, seeks unspecified damages from the federal government and additional safeguards to protect the rights of American citizens and persons with mental disabilities who are subject to potential deportation. The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and top officials from those agencies are named in the lawsuit. The suit also targets Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based private company that runs the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga.
