{"id":609793,"date":"2018-08-03T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=609793"},"modified":"2018-08-02T15:37:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T21:37:54","slug":"a-tale-of-revenge-and-immigration-leaves-a-mother-of-american-kids-locked-up-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/08\/a-tale-of-revenge-and-immigration-leaves-a-mother-of-american-kids-locked-up-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of revenge and immigration leaves a mother of American kids locked up in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Immigration

Tom Barry \/ for The Texas Tribune<\/p>

An immigration detention facility in Hudspeth Co. just outside of Sierra Blanca, about 100 miles east of El Paso.<\/p><\/div>\n

As she sat in a West Texas immigration detention center on Friday, three days before her 36th birthday, Ivonne Burciaga Prieto wondered why she\u2019s seen other undocumented immigrants released while she’s still languishing there after nearly six months.<\/p>\n

After all, the mother of three U.S. citizen children traveled freely back and forth across the Texas-Mexico border for decades. She paid taxes here, bought a home here and registered her car in her name here. She believes that she is a citizen too.<\/p>\n

But Burciaga Prieto has been in federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in Sierra Blanca since February, after authorities accused her of making a false claim to citizenship by presenting a fake birth certificate. It’s the same document she\u2019s used for years to enter El Paso from Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer mother told her she was born outside of Houston and … used a midwife,\u201d said Burciaga Prieto’s attorney, Stephen Spurgin. \u201cA midwife jumped through all the hoops to sign off on [the birth certificate] and the people at the bridge were happy with that for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happy, Spurgin argues, until Burciaga Prieto was the victim of retaliation.<\/p>\n