Boy, 17, brought to US as baby deported to Mexico for weed possession
A 17-year-old undocumented teen who was brought to the US as a baby has been deported to Mexico due to possession of marijuana.
Brandon Salinas was arrested in April 2019 in Dalton, Georgia, one of the few states in the US that doesn’t decriminalize weed.
He was deported on January 20, where he stood trial with no attorney to represent him, ABC News first reported.
‘They’re going to take me away from my family, or, you know, take me away from my education,’ he said. ‘So many things. Just for one small mistake I got to pay for, for my whole life, basically.’
He now lives in Torreon, Mexico with his grandparents, where his shower is a bucket of water and his door is a draped curtain.
‘This is my home for right now, but I mean, it wasn’t the home I was expecting to get to,’ Salinas said. ‘I was expecting to stay in America.’
Salinas grew up in Georgia, playing on high school sports teams, going to church, and developing has a Southern twang to his speech. His mother brought him to the country 16 years ago across the Rio Grande.
‘I was too short to walk over the Rio Grande,’ Brandon said. ‘They put me on their shoulders because the water was too high.’
He said he feels ‘uneasy’ because he has to learn a whole new language, as Salinas doesn’t speak Spanish.
‘I wish I could go back in time, but I can’t go back in time,’ Salinas. ‘Wish I could change some bad decisions I made, but I can’t. I can only try to improve myself for the future.’
He was arrested for the possession of marijuana, as well as lying about his age and the spelling of his name, police said.
‘When you’re young I guess you make reckless decisions,’ Salinas said. ‘Don’t really think about the consequences of your actions. That’s where I messed up.’
Salinas would spend nine months behind bars, first in a local jail, then in various Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers across the South.
‘I would sleep in the day because there was nothing to do, and at night I would be awake and just think of my family,’ he said.
Salinas cannot legally enter the country for another ten years, leaving behind his mother and siblings who were born in the country, making them legal citizens.
ICE was expanded under Donald Trump, and Atlanta office director John Tsoukaris acknowledged that while many immigrants have been deported due to minor crimes, they are still committing a crime.
‘We’re a country of laws and we expect everybody to follow it,’ Tsoukaris said.
Since 2014, there have been 45,500 removals of illegal immigrants from the US.
There are multiple humanitarian organizations that claim that ICE internment camps are committing human rights violations.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.