Hearing Ordered in Ouster of Citizen

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has criticized an immigration judge for wrongly deporting a U.S. citizen to Mexico and has ordered a new hearing in the man’s case.

U.S. Circuit Judge Warren J. Ferguson, writing for a three-judge panel, said the jurist, now serving in Los Angeles, had failed to “conduct herself as an impartial judge but rather as a prosecutor anxious to pick holes in the petitioner’s story.”

The case concerns Salvador Rivera, 25, who was born in Portland, Ore., used an alias and once pretended to be Mexican to avoid arrest warrants. He was even voluntarily deported once before.

But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled last week that these factors did not warrant “banishment from the United States or involuntary relinquishment of citizenship.”

Lawyers say Rivera has been struggling to survive without proper documents in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez since 2001, when Immigration Judge Anna Ho denied his claim of citizenship and ordered him removed.

Ho, then serving in Seattle, dismissed as dubious the paperwork presented by Rivera’s mother, including his birth certificate, a middle-school report card, tax records and a page from a high school yearbook.

Ferguson also noted as “bizarre” Ho’s exchange with Rivera’s mother over the legitimacy of his birth documents. Ho could not be reached for comment.

The court also faulted the former Immigration and Naturalization Service -- now the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services -- for not thoroughly investigating the authenticity of Rivera’s birth certificate.

“It was executive abuse, and that’s what the court called it,” said Karen Gilbert, one of the Rivera’s lawyers, who handled his case free of charge. “The trial attorney and the judge just ganged up on him.”

It could take months for Rivera’s case to be reviewed and for him to be allowed back in the United States, lawyers said.

Immigration officials arrested Rivera, whose most recent U.S. address was in Mount Vernon, Wash., when he reported to a probation officer in 2000 after his release from prison on a drug conviction.