Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales was arrested on Sunday. ICE won’t release her despite extensive documentation of her citizenship, her attorneys told HuffPost.
A Maryland woman has spent days in immigration detention despite being a U.S. citizen with a valid birth certificate and other documentation — documents ICE claims aren’t authentic, her attorneys told HuffPost Thursday.
Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, 22, was born in Maryland and spent time in Mexico before coming back to the United States, Victoria Slatton, one of the attorneys working on her case, told HuffPost in a phone call Thursday. Slatton has worked to draw attention to Diaz Morales’ case, including in several TikTok videos.
Shirley Elvirita, Diaz Morales’ 17-year-old sister, told HuffPost over the phone Thursday night that she, her sister and their father were doing laundry in Baltimore on Sunday, and afterwards, the sisters went to pick up some Taco Bell. After getting back on the road, Shirley recalled, they were surrounded by several vehicles filled with law enforcement personnel, who pulled them over. Officers ignored Shirley’s questions and took her sister “forcefully” into one of the vans. They told Shirley they would let her go – but not her sister.
She’s wasn’t even “in the country legally” she is a fucking natural born citizen. She committed the crime of brownness
So if asked “was she in the country legally” you’d answer “no, because she was a citizen”? That makes zero sense to my autistic brain. I’d answer “yes, because she was a citizen”
If someone asked you to describe your immigration status, would you say “I’m in the country legally” if you were born there?
Subtext exists, and is pretty important to recognize when it’s used for propaganda.
I understand you weren’t using it that way on purpose.
I’d actually probably freeze up because I have trouble answering questions with false assumptions, the assumption here being I’m an immigrant. If someone asked “are you in the country legally”, I’d say yes and potentially not even realize they think I’m an immigrant
The subtext works both ways, though. The question is malformed in my example because it implies an incorrect fact, and you rightly bristle at it because of that. But the statement “she’s here legally” is similarly implying a subtly different question that isn’t being asked, and then answering that question instead of the real one. So it made me bristle in the same way. And it’s a technique that’s often used intentionally to dishonestly reframe conversations, especially around contentious topics. The hostile responses seem to be incorrectly (but unfortunately reasonably these days) assuming this intent.
Unfortunately, the question was raised by ICE about whether the woman was in the country legally or not. It shouldn’t have been in question, but it was. ICE detained her claiming she was in the country illegally, thereby raising the question was she there illegally or legally and the answer is she was in the country legally because she was a citizen. I just didn’t think I needed to specify her being a citizen, I thought all that mattered to the discussion was whether her presence was legal or illegal.
With my autism, receiving a reply that said “she wasn’t in the country legally” because she was a citizen was genuinely confusing. Are citizens not to be classified as legally present when ICE asks if they’re legally present or not?
So if someone asked you if she was a legal resident, you’d say no?
Removed by mod
I’m autistic. I mean exactly what I say. I didn’t think stating the fact that she was in the country legally somehow implied she was an immigrant. Besides, my point was that in general people who are there legally are being detained unjustly, that applies to all legal residents, both immigrants and citizens
No, I just have a problem with being contradicted when I’m right. Was she in the country? Yes. Was it legal for her to be in the country? Yes. How was she not “in the country legally”? I never said she was from elsewhere
I was agreeing with and elevating the point you were making by stating that beyond being here legally, it is impossible for her to be here illegally because she was born here. Jesus fucking Christ why do you need to split every single hair!? And you can edit a comment when you come up with something else to say, you can quit replying twice and three times.
A person who is physically present in the country is either there legally or illegally. It seems you object to my phrasing because, as a natural born citizen, there shouldn’t have been a need to distinguish if she was there legally or not. But sadly it was in question, shouldn’t have been but was.
Yes, natural born citizens are legal residents
No they are not. “Legal resident” is a specific legal classification different from “citizen.” You are confusing the dictionary definition of words with legal definitions.
But it was legal for her to be in the country. Citizens are in the country legally.
How can she not be called a legal resident? She is a resident and it is legal for her to be
You’re right. Here’s the best image I could find explaining the issue of the semantics here:
Are both residents and citizens legal residents? Sure. In the context of immigration law the citizen would probably only be described as such unless the context made it clear someone was using more of the dictionary definition than the legal definition as the parent commenter alluded to.
That chart doesn’t include “Naturalized Citizenship.” A naturalized citizen (for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Melania Trump) was born elsewhere but has been vetted and tested and taken an oath to become a citizen. They can vote, and serve on a jury, and work a federal job, and be Governor of California, but they can’t be President.
And now Trump is trying to revoke the citizenship of all the ones he doesn’t like. He’s also trying to revoke the birthright citizenship of the children of immigrants.
“Legal resident” is an open compound word spelled with a space, not an adjective modifying a noun. An elementary school at the top of a hill is not a “high school” even though it is high and also a school. This is because “high school” is a word that means specifically secondary school (in North America at least), which excludes primary/elementary schools. Likewise in the United States, a “legal resident” refers to a non-citizen lawful permanent resident, not just any person who resides in a country legally.