[ASL] ICE Deported a Deaf Child and Took Away Both His Languages.

Описание: ICE arrested a 6-year-old Deaf child at his mother's mandatory check-in appointment, and deported him to Colombia without his cochlear implant.

This is probably one of the most heartbreaking podcasts I've made on this Snark Bait channel. As a Deaf content creator, this story hit me really hard. It's one of those things where, as soon as I saw the story, my reaction was, "I HAVE to make a video about this." As a Deaf individual fluent in ASL, I offer a unique perspective on this story that very few others have.

The story? This past week, a 6-year-old Deaf boy was arrested, alongside his mother and his 5-year-old brother, and deported to Colombia after they attended a mandatory ICE check-in appointment. The kicker? His relatives were there, and they had his cochlear implant device. ICE refused to allow them to return the device to him.

The Background

Note: I have gathered the following information from multiple news sources and combined them here. I will be listing all of my sources at the bottom of this description.

Joseph Andrey Londono Rodriguez was a 6-year-old Deaf student at California School for the Deaf - Fremont, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. He had attended the school for three years, and was learning ASL as his primary language. According to school officials, he was making great progress in his ASL development.

On the day of his mother's mandatory ICE appointment, he was sick, so he missed school that day. His mother couldn't leave him at home, so she brought him along. At the meeting, ICE arrested the entire family and detained them.

However, the family was here in America legally. They had immigrated to the USA in 2022, and applied for asylum in 2023. The family was attempting to escape an abusive man who had gang ties, which is why they fled to the USA. While here in the country, they attended every mandatory weekly immigrant court meeting and monthly ICE meeting. They did not have any criminal records at all. Despite all of that, they were still arrested and detained, then ultimately deported to Colombia.

The Legal Nightmare

Not only were they doing everything legally, which is what MAGA Republicans supposedly say they're supposed to do, but they were doing things the "right" way. None of that mattered. They still got detained anyway. And to make things worse, while their lawyers were trying to return them to their homes, ICE deliberately denied them their habeas corpus right. "Habeas corpus" means that you have the legal right to defend yourself in court, and it's one of the most important rights enshrined in the US Constitution. However, in order to properly apply for habeas corpus, you have to do it in the district where you're held. ICE got around this by moving the family around ... first to Louisiana, then to Phoenix, then to Washington state, before finally deporting them to Colombia from Phoenix. This constant shuffling around made it so that the lawyers could never apply for habeas corpus in the correct district. MAGA Republicans will look at this and see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The Linguistic Nightmare

Back to Joseph, our Deaf child. Not only was he abruptly deported to Colombia without any warning, but he was also denied the ability to retrieve his cochlear implant. That's a double whammy. Not only is he now in Colombia, a country where the Deaf population doesn't even use ASL at all, thus denying him his first language ... he can't even make up the difference by accessing spoken language via his cochlear implant. He's being deprived of both his languages, and when he's at an age where language development is at such a vital moment. And MAGA Republicans will clap their hands in glee, loudly proclaiming that,"They voted for this!" How utterly sickening.

The worst thing in all of this is that Joseph was placed smack dab in a lose-lose situation. Because he was sick, he got deported to Colombia and lost his languages. But even if he wasn't sick, his mother and brother would've been deported anyway, and he would've lost his family and essentially become an orphan.

To think, 77 million Americans voted for this.

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
https://www.kcra.com/article/deaf-6-y...
https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/a...
https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr26/yr2...

#ice #DeportedChild #DeafChild #asl #SnarkBait