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A family of U.S. citizens in Milwaukee was recently detained by U.S. officials who questioned their immigration status after hearing them speak Spanish — the latest incident of racial profiling amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown across the country. A relative of the family told reporters that his detained family members were born in Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory; people born there are U.S. citizens.
Telemundo Puerto Rico first reported the incident on Monday. Some details about the incident, including when it happened, are unclear, due to the family choosing to remain anonymous out of fears that they could be targeted again.
According to the report, the three family members — a toddler, his mother and his grandmother — were shopping in Milwaukee when they were overheard speaking Spanish. U.S. officials, possibly agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), detained all three soon after, refusing to listen to their protestations until they reached a government facility.
The brother of one of the women who was detained said that she had tried to explain their situation to no avail.
“My sister, in English, explained that not only are they American citizens, but that they are from Puerto Rico. They were born in Puerto Rico,” said the brother, who spoke anonymously to Telemundo about the matter.
The U.S. officials eventually released the three family members, but only after the mother presented their birth certificates, the family recounted. One agent claimed they were “so sorry” for the error — but upon releasing the family, officials refused to drive them back to where they were initially detained, essentially stranding them and requiring them to pay for their own transportation.
This latest incident of racial profiling is consistent with the Trump administration’s blueprint for nationwide mass deportations — earlier this month, White House “border czar” Tom Homan said that the operation would likely include “collateral arrests.”
Human rights advocates have warned that the administration’s plan will likely be enforced through widespread racial profiling, and will have “cataclysmic consequences” not only for undocumented people, but also for immigrants who are citizens or authorized to live in the U.S., who may also be targeted for deportation.
Just this past week, more than a dozen members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico were reportedly swept up in immigration raids, with U.S. officials refusing to accept their tribal identifications as valid proof of citizenship. In response, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren released a statement advising Diné/Navajo Nation members to “carry state-issued identification” on their persons, “such as a driver’s license, other picture identification, or their Certificate of Indian blood, known as a CIB,” citing Indigenous people’s “negative, and sometimes traumatizing, experiences with federal agents targeting undocumented immigrants in the Southwest.”
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