St. Clair Shores man deported over 10-year-old pot charges - How nuts is this?

[Bozita]

Last Updated: January 14. 2010 1:57AM
St. Clair Shores man deported over 10-year-old pot charges
All-but-American man deported after trip to Mexico
Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News


Stupidity is not a crime. But stupidity is a deportable offense.

Case in point: Charlie Castillo was born in Canada, the son of Maltese immigrants. The family came to Detroit when he was 1 year old and since then Castillo has spent his entire life in the metro area.

Castillo, 54, was as American as they come. He spent 33 years working in the factories of General Motors. He bought a little house in the suburbs and raised three children there. He also was convicted a decade ago for growing two pot plants in his yard and possessing a quarter-pound of pot in his house. Both felonies.

Castillo is not an American, technically. He never bothered to apply for citizenship and so lived his life as a permanent resident alien. According to immigration law, Castillo's marijuana convictions make him akin to a narcotics trafficker. And narcotics traffickers are supposed to be deported.

But Immigration agents never bothered with Castillo because Castillo was small fry. Immigration authorities do not bother with a lot of people in the United States. There are approximately 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, according to a 2008 study by the Pew Research Center.

And in many big cities like Los Angeles, the police are prohibited from contacting immigration officials no matter how heinous a crime the person commits even if it is known to local authorities that the person is in the country illegally.

For the marijuana charges, Castillo was allowed pay fines, told to keep his nose clean and returned to his ranch house in St. Clair Shores.

'It was stupid'

But then in 2006, Castillo took his wife to Cancun, Mexico, figuring the sun would be good for her multiple sclerosis. This was the post 9/11 world and when Castillo landed in Metro Airport he was red-flagged and charged with violation of immigration law.


Read more: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100114/METRO08/1140369/1439/METRO08/St.-Clair-Shores-man-deported-over-10-year-old-pot-charges#ixzz0ccV689jz

[SoCalDem]

1. At his age, perhaps being "Canadian" might end up a "good thing"

Maybe he can rent out his house and just be Canadian:) His friends in Detroit can visit him

[Fumesucker]

2. Consider that you can be convicted of murder and still get federal education subsidies..

Get busted with a single pot seed and you are ineligible for those same subsidies..

Since drug use is a crime against the state, not an individual, it is considered more serious than murder in some ways.

[Romulox]

3. More drug war madness. nt

[KansDem]

4. You know, I have a theory about "law enforcement" at this level

A couple of days ago, a DUer posted a video of police raiding a medical-marijuana clinic in Orange County, California. They came in in force, rousted the clinic staff, 'cuff them and taped the lenses of the clinic cameras. Pretty tough stuff.

Now we have this story. And we've seen from time to time police using Tasers on elderly people, diabetics, and the like.

As long as the crimes of Bush and Cheney go unprosecuted, and the banks and Wall Street go uninvestigated, we will continue to live under a cloud of "two justice systems": One for the oligarchy and the other for the rest of us.

What we have with reports of this nature is the perception of a justice system. We see how local DAs and prosecutors, with eager police departments, are going after (relatively small) crimes, and we can say to ourselves "We're still being held accountable for our crimes." Perhaps we find solace in this thought: that we're still a "nation of laws."

But the big fish continue to get away.