A United States citizen with roots in the British Virgin Islands was detained and almost deported because immigration officers refused to believe he had the right to remain in the country
Brian Bukle was born in the British Virgin Islands but naturalised in the 1960s through his parents when he was just nine years old. Bukle arrived in the US in 1961 when he was 2 years old as a lawful permanent resident. Both of his parents were naturalised in March 1968 while he was a minor and under federal law this automatically made him a US citizen.
Bukle was incarcerated in 2018 for two years for assault and possession of a firearm. While in custody, he told staff at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that he was a US citizen on several occasions and this fact was noted in their files. Despite this, prison staff still labeled Bukle as what is known by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a “potential hold”. The Department of Corrections habitually shares lists of foreign-born prisoners with ICE and both agencies ignored repeated attempts by Bukle and his family members to prove his citizenship.
Instead of being released on June 16, 2020, Bukle was taken into custody by ICE the next day and moved to the Mesa Verde Detention Facility in Bakersfield. At this point, Bukle had been a US citizen for more than 50 years.
According to a lawsuit filed last November in the US District Court for the Central District of California, Bukle was refused permission to contact his family to verify his legal position and spent 36 days in an ICE detention center. It took the intervention of two immigration attorneys before ICE was convinced that Bukle was indeed a US citizen and he was released from custody on July 22, 2020. One day later, an immigration judge dismissed his deportation proceedings.
The US government settled the lawsuit with Bukle on December 5 and have been ordered to pay him $150,000 for his wrongful arrest and detention to compensate for the injustice to which he was subjected.
Civil rights advocates believe Bukle was subjected to the discriminatory treatment because of his race. Data shows ICE disproportionately selects Black immigrants for deportation. According to the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Black immigrants are more likely to be targeted for deportation and come in contact with ICE than immigrants of any other race. Put in context, while seven percent of non-citizens in the US are Black, they account for twenty percent of persons facing deportation triggered by the criminal justice system according to figures released by that organisation.
Bukle’s story is not an isolated incident. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published in July 2022 documented hundreds of cases of immigration enforcement that ICE had carried out against potential US citizens. From fiscal year 2015 through the second quarter of fiscal year 2020, ICE arrested 674 potential US citizens, detaining 121 and deporting 70.
Immigration detention and deportation proceedings often serve as another form of persecution and unofficial prosecution even after immigrants have completed their periods of incarceration. Green card holders may be deported if they commit certain serious crimes – such as drug and gun firearm offences – and that can lead to some non-citizen offenders receiving far greater punishments than their citizen peers for the same crimes.
