Filipina migrant sues US immigration

Photo by Gunnar Pippel on ShutterStock.

Filipino-American Sharon Arlanza Yost, 33, of San Diego, California filed a lawsuit against the United States government for negligence, false imprisonment, and emotional distress.

Yost is suing the US government for getting detained for nearly seven months in 2011 and even threatened to be deported even after being granted full American citizenship at the age of 13, two years after their family migrated to the US in 1991. The lawsuit was filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of California

Yost was detained from May 14 until the first week of December 2011 based on a “purported, but baseless, belief” that she’s going to be deported for not being a US citizen.

According to Yost’s affidavit and supporting documents, her mother married an American citizen in 1985 and was naturalized in 1989.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) insisted that Yost was not a citizen when a warrant of arrest was issued for her in 2011.

Yost’s legal documents, however, prove otherwise, saying that she’s been a US citizen since April 28, 1993.

With reports from Manila Bulletin and Yahoo! Philippines