At DHS, dysfunctionality is bipartisan:

N.C. native wrongly deported to Mexico
Federal investigators ignored evidence the man is a U.S. citizen, documents show.

The U.S. government admitted in April that it had wrongly deported an N.C. native, but newly released documents show that federal investigators ignored FBI records and other evidence showing that the man was a United States citizen.

At the time of Mark Lyttle’s deportation, immigration officials had criminal record checks that said he was a U.S. citizen. They had his Social Security number and the names of his parents. They had Lyttle’s own sworn statement that he had been born in Rowan County [NC].

None of this stopped them from leaving Lyttle, a mentally ill American who speaks no Spanish, alone and penniless in Mexico, where he has no ties.

Lyttle’s 350-page Department of Homeland Security file, released to The (Raleigh) News & Observer, shows that the government deported him based entirely on some of his own conflicting statements, even though agents knew that Lyttle is bipolar and has a learning disability.

“I tried to tell them I was a U.S. citizen born right here in Rowan County,” Lyttle says now. “But no one believed me.”

Lyttle is one of a growing number of people who have been swept up in the federal immigration detention system since 2001, when terrorist attacks prompted an unprecedented effort to find and deport illegal immigrants. The U.S. government deported 350,000 people in the fiscal year that ended in October 2008.

When The N&O first reported on Lyttle’s case in April, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said that Lyttle had caused the mistake by declaring that he was from Mexico. They maintain that position now.

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Lyttle swore to immigration agents on two occasions that he was Mexican, but he also swore that he was a U.S. citizen born in Rowan County. His Homeland Security file does not reflect any attempt by ICE officials to confirm Lyttle’s citizenship claims.

The agent who took Lyttle’s statement that he was born in North Carolina dismissed it, saying in a report that Lyttle “does not possess any documentation to support his claim.”

***

The ICE file states that Lyttle’s Mexican citizenship “was established based on interview results and numerous background system checks.” But repeated background checks, from an FBI fingerprint database and the National Crime Information Center, showed he was an American citizen.

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The inconsistencies in his case were not discussed when Lyttle appeared before an Atlanta immigration judge and was ordered deported on Dec.9. On Dec. 18, he was loaded onto a plane and left at an airport just across the border from Hidalgo, Texas.

On Dec. 29, he returned to the U.S. border threatening to hurt himself and the border patrol agents. “Subject appears to be mentally unstable,” the report notes.

***

Lyttle again told immigration agents he had been born in Rowan County. This time the file shows that they checked for his birth certificate there. They didn’t find it because Lyttle is adopted. In cases of adoption, birth certificates are stored in Raleigh, said Shirley Stiller, the deputy register of deeds in Rowan County.

Lyttle was deported a second time, within hours. With no documents to prove legal residency in any country, he soon found himself on an international odyssey.

Mexican authorities sent him to Honduras, where he was imprisoned before being sent to Guatemala.

In late April, he found the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Within a day, officials there contacted Lyttle’s brother at the military base where Lyttle told them he was serving, got copies of his adoption papers and issued him a U.S. passport.

***

“This is not rocket science,” said Jacqueline Stevens, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara who brought Lyttle’s case to light on her blog and is now writing a book about it. “It took someone in Guatemala one day to prove he was a [U.S.] citizen.”

***

He [Lyttle] says he figured he would take a free trip to Mexico.

It worked really well. He not only got free trips to Mexico, he got side trips to Honduras and Guatemala as well.

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UPDATED scroll down
If Obama and his socialist minions in Congress really want to help us they should focus on fixing the quirks in our health care system instead of bombarding us with the mantra that “47 million uninsured Americans” justifies a federal takeover of 15% of the U.S. economy.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock on Aug 29, 2009, there were 307,305,600 people living in the U.S. As far as anyone can tell, every man, woman and child is receiving at least minimum health care and that includes illegal aliens. [That is, unless they've been kidnapped and held in a tent in someone's backyard.]

We know that U.S. residents who have health insurance coverage receive better care than residents with no insurance and it’s manifestly true that those with good insurance get better care than those with lousy insurance. With that said, we certainly know that nobody, including the most vitriolic and unpleasant voices from the Obama camp, have dared use the argument that people are suffering and dying in the streets because they have no health insurance.

Why is that?

From sea to shining sea health care systems have evolved that assure those in need are taken care of one way or another. I’ll mention just one, albeit a major one, as an illustration.

There’s a federally mandated public policy that protects those with no insurance. The mandate covers the emergency rooms of community (or public, not private) hospitals across the breath of America. All public hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid payments. Ergo, they all fall under a federal law that prohibits them from turning away a patient for lack of insurance or the inability to pay for services. With the hyped-up number of 47 million uninsured (it’s actually LESS than half that — see UPDATE below) the federally imposed public policy means your local public hospitals are dishing out massive numbers of un-reimbursed services and we taxpayers are paying the bills.

And it gets even worse. My local hospital in North Carolina has signs in several languages throughout the premises to notify the poorly insured and illegal aliens that they are ENTITLED — by U.S. and NC law — to the full services of the facility. The most prominent signs are at the emergency room entrance, the maternity entrance, the pediatric unit, the surgery unit, the geriatric unit, and the clinical services unit, but there are, indeed, signs in every service unit of the hospital.

We, the taxpayers, pay for those federally mandated un-reimbursed services. Local and state governments make payments to public hospitals to cover unpaid services and we pay more through higher insurance premiums. That’s because federal Medicare and Medicaid payments are made to public hospitals and the federal Department of HHS calls the shots in establishing the institution’s accounting practices. HHS makes sure that every borderline cost item is billed to an insurance company instead of being booked to un-recovered cost that might eventually be paid by Medicare, Medicaid, or in subsidy payments from state and local government.

As I said, this is only one way the uninsured and poorly insured already receive medical care. There’s still the massive Medicaid system, health departments that ask no questions, services delivered at schools, SCHIP, and many more. Most of these are largely funded by the states.

If Obama and his cronies want funding for a “public option” or a “single payer” system, why are they talking about getting new money? The money is already there. They could shift the debate from needing trillions of new dollars to a conversation about how to re-direct the money from state and local responsibility to federal responsibility. That would make a cleaner and less acrimonious debate.

I would still be adamantly against the power grab but at least a truthful premise would result in a more civil discourse.

But, of course, that kind of debate would not serve His goal of socializing U.S. medical services.

Update

Obama says that “46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage. They are just vulnerable. If something happens, they go bankrupt, or they don’t get the care they need.” But everyone can currently obtain care, even if they cannot pay. That is why 60 hospitals in California have closed, because the law requires them to treat everyone. And that 46 million number is known to be bogus, since 9.7 million of this number are illegal aliens. By one estimate, 14 million Americans choose not to obtain coverage. 18 million are under 34 and are either dependents or simply opt not to seek insurance, according to one study. When these numbers are subtracted, only 5 million uninsured remain.

John Griffing @ American Thinker

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BTW: How Much Is $20 Trillion? That’s where the national debt is headed right soon.

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The New TV Ad Exposing The Obama Health Care Takeover That ABC And NBC Refuses To Air

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New Footage of release of Captain Phillips by US Navy SEALS
News – insidesomalia.org

This is a new docudrama from the discovery channel, it tells what happened at high seas with the Somali pirates that took Maersk Alabama and its crew for Hostage. (Watch the play by play clip… very interesting)

H/T: Pesky Emotional Republican

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