Teen U.S. citizen says she was terrified during immigration raid

Teen U.S. citizen says she was terrified during immigration raid
By Eunice Moscoso Wednesday, February 13, 2008, 06:20 PM

Marie Justeen Mancha, an American citizen and high school honor student from Reidsville, Ga., told lawmakers Wednesday that she was terrified when four federal agents stormed into her house, screaming, “Police! Illegals!”
“My heart just dropped,” she said. “When the tall man reached for his gun, I just stood there feeling so scared. I could’ve busted out in tears, but I had to be strong and hold it in.”
Mancha, who was 15 years old at the time and alone in her home, testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law, about the incident, which occurred in conjunction with a September 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at a poultry plant in nearby Stillmore. Ga.
“I carry that fear with me every day, wondering when they’ll come back,” she said, in a heavy southern accent.
Mancha was born in Texas and moved to Reidsville when she was 7 years-old. Her mother, who was born in Florida, was also at the hearing.
The panel was examining incidents in which U.S. citizens were questioned, detained or even deported in ICE raids.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who chairs the committee, said that she feared we have arrived in an era “where an overzealous government is interrogating, detaining and deporting its own citizens while treating non-citizens even worse.”
Gary Mead, assistant director for detention and removal at ICE, told the panel that his agency has “never knowingly or intentionally detained or removed a U.S. citizen.
In the “highly unlikely” event that an ICE officer determines that a U.S. citizen has been mistakenly deported, ICE takes appropriate action to locate the citizen and ensure immediate repatriation to the United States at no expense to the person, he said.
In the past four years, ICE has detained more than 1 million people and deported only one U.S. citizen, he said. That person — Peter Guzman — told ICE agents that he was a Mexican citizen, Mead said.