The workings of I.C.E. are despicable. They detained me at the airport on my arrival back into the States after visiting my grandparents. Needless-to-say, due to I.C.E. transferring me around in shackles, I missed two court dates with I.C.E. officials claiming they have no idea about any court dates. All they do is lie, lie and lie and beat around the bush on every question/inquiry you ask them.

I was also sent to the tent city in Brownsville. Willacy detention center. Well, the place is the worst run facility. They give you used underwear and used socks for crying out loud. The organization in the facility is ridiculous. The hired ’security’ are complete idiots, half of them didn’t even know where the United Kingdom was. Then I would tell them England, they still didn’t know, I would say London, and they still didn’t know where it was. Hell the prosecutor didn’t know where the United Kingdom was.

Needless-to-say, after I finally made it to a court hearing, I told them to fuck off and send me back to the UK, which they did. I didn’t get deported as I found a loop hole in the system. They arrested me at the border, so I was in the US, but I wasn’t really there. So I withdrew my application to enter the US, and in turn they had to send me back. I still have my Green Card as shocking as that sounds.

I paid for my own ticket; however, I had to go through I.C.E. and paid a total of $2700 for a one way ticket to the UK. I would assume the I.C.E. pocketed more than half of that ticket price, as my father looked it up on his own and the ticket price came out to roughly $1000 for a one way ticket.

As I’m a web developer, I’m going to be setting up my own website with articles and stories from others that have had to go through this process of ignorance. I would love to have your help on it, if you’re interested please email me at the email that I entered to post this reply.

The term I am familiar with is ‘voluntary departure’, where they basically remove you, but with your consent. For someone who is not charged and convicted in criminal proceedings, voluntary departure means they give you a specified amount of time to leave voluntarily.

In cases like yours, however, they make you sign a voluntary departure form and remove you from the country, because then they don’t need a court order of removal. They can remove you and how that you left voluntarily because you signed the papers. Only difference between this kind of voluntary and non-voluntary departure is that if you depart voluntarily (on paper), you don’t have a 10 year immigration bar to go back to the States, where as if you are deported, you have a 10 year bar.

If you are illegal AND you’ve been convicted of a crime, first and foremost, you have to do the time for your conviction.

After that, there are typically two ways: You can be offered voluntary departure, or you will spend your 90 days in immigration detention, because that is how long they can hold you for immigration without a court order. Typically, within ninety days they will get a deportation order, based on which they will deport you. So whether you get a hearing or not is different, they NEED an order from an immigration judge to deport you.

Voluntary departure is typically offered to those who typically have a pending immigration case that may have been refused. The idea is to give the person being asked to leave a grace period to wrap up and leave the US, but it also sometimes extended to people at the discretion of immigration officers. The set procedure here as outlined by the DoJ and Congress is hardly ever followed, and you are basically at the mercy of the immigration officer who is incharge of your case.

How did you arrive in the US, and what was your status when you were arrested for involvement in fraud?

To the best of my knowledge, a conviction would you typically mean you do your convicted time in prison, after which they’d probably move you to an immigration detention facility, 90 days+ from thereon they would deport you.

That’s how I’ve known it to work. Immigration lawyers are wortheless in the US; they function on rapport with immigration officer rather then on procedure or law, and that’s only useful if you’re filing some kind of an application that you want to get approved.