Posted on 06/24/2007 10:51:28 AM PDT by bkwells
She voted not knowing she wasn't a U.S. citizen
By Robert Jablon ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 24, 2007
LOS ANGELES – Zoila Meyer spent her whole life believing she was an American.
Her parents brought her with them from Cuba when she was 1 year old and always told her she was a U.S. citizen. She even won election to the City Council of Adelanto, a town of about 23,000 in Southern California's high desert.
But on Tuesday, immigration officers put the 40-year-old mother of four in handcuffs, and she is facing deportation for illegally voting.
“To be honest with you, I'm scared. How can they just pluck me out of my family, my kids?” Meyer said in a telephone interview.
Meyer, whose story was first reported in the Victorville Daily Press, lives in the San Bernardino County desert town of Apple Valley. She was living in nearby Adelanto when she was elected to the City Council in 2004.
At that point, a member of her husband's family who dislikes Meyer contacted officials and told them she was born in Cuba, prompting an investigation.
Eventually, “the police came to me and said, 'Zoila, you're not a citizen. You're a legal resident, but you're not a citizen,' ” Meyer said.
She resigned after 10 weeks in office. “I apologized. . . . It hurt me to do that, too,” she said.
Meyer also has applied to become a naturalized citizen. In the meantime, she continued with her life: raising two sons and two daughters, and attending two local colleges to earn degrees toward her goal of working as a forensic nurse.
However, because she wasn't a citizen, Meyer faced a felony charge of illegally voting in the 2004 election.
In April 2006, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting and was placed on probation, fined and ordered to pay restitution, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
What Meyer didn't realize is that fraudulently voting is a deportable offense.
On Monday night, immigration officials showed up at Meyer's home and warned her to appear at their San Bernardino office the next day.
Her husband drove her to the office Tuesday. “And they handcuffed me,” Meyer said. “They put me in jail, and they frisked me and processed me.
“I said, 'You're doing this because I voted?' ”
She was released but must appear July 18 before an immigration judge, who will determine if she'll be deported to Canada, which was the last point of entry into the United States recorded in her immigration record.
Meyer said she and her parents had visited Canada and she had gone many times to Mexico, but no one asked her to prove her citizenship.
The case is unusual, but immigration officials were doing their job when they arrested Meyer, Haley said.
“People are arrested on immigration charges from all walks of life,” she said. “She can plead her case before an immigration judge if she feels that she has reason to seek release for removal. . . . Everybody has due process when they're arrested.”
Meyer, who does not support illegal immigration, said her family has decided to sell the house and move to Canada if she loses the case. But she has no desire to pull up roots.
“I loved where I'm at. I don't know anyone in Canada. . . . This is where I live,” she said.
Ping
There is a BP near my house that has between 40-60 day laborours in the parking lot on a daily basis. At least 2/3rds are probably illegal. Nothing has been done about it and i’ve called off and on for the last five years. The locals don’t care. The feds don’t care. Nobody gives a damn about enforcing the law.
Just part of the campaign effort to pass the amnesty bill.
Arrest the bozos that let her register to vote.
Yes, this is injustice; but it is no where near the rule. For the amount of effort that the feds put into finding this woman, they could have rounded up 100 of the newly arrived and sent them home.
That is my suspicion too. Shadow government enforcement.
Wonder how many other illegal voters have been deported?
They “make an example out of her” to push for amnesty, not to scare other potential illegal voters.
If she was not elligible to vote, how could she be elligible to serve? Odd that the authorities would focus on the vote, not the office held.
Can non-citizen residents hold elected office?
She voted not knowing she wasn’t a U.S. citizen
I don’t buy it if she was a legal resident then she had a visa/green card and knew it. If she thought she was a United States Citizen they she had no need to be a legal resident this story appears to distort the facts. Apparently her family knew she was a resident alien. Where was her birth certificate?
BS. Nobody gets to be 40 years old without ever seeing or requiring their birth certificate.
Expect to see many, many, many more heartbreaking stories about families being torn apart, etc. It’s intended to prove how you’re a racist, bigot, vigilant and etc. picking on poor Mexicans just trying to make a living. All part of the NWO.
She’s not even illegal, she just isn’t a citizen. What is the policy with Cuba, “wet foot, dry foot” or something like that?
I had an ancestor who came over with his parents at age 5. He was in his 90s when some process determined there had been a clerical error (possibly even the original records were burned in a fire).
He had to “become” a citizen in his 90s.
If your name is Elian, you’re going to back to the Communist dictatorship under force of gun.
I agree, but isn’t it also unwrittenly true that, after time, something becomes fact ... like common law marriage or something?
I, for one, am spectacularly unimpressed!
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