ICE Detained an Elderly Man and Told His Family He Died in Custody. They Just Found Out the Truth.

Of all the ongoing horror stories of the administration's fascistic crackdown on migrants, this is one of the worst. That is because it deals with the ill-treatment of an 82-year old man who only was in this country because he was caught up in the great grinding machine of American foreign policy atrocities more than fifty years ago. The government's crimes of today are rooted in its crimes of memory. From The Morning Call:

Relatives of 82-year-old Allentown resident Luis Leon are headed to a Guatemalan hospital Saturday in hopes of reuniting with the man they say disappeared without a trace into the American immigration system a month ago—and who, for a time, they thought was dead. The last time anyone in the family saw Leon was June 20, when he went with his wife to a Philadelphia immigration office to have his lost green card replaced. There, the family says, he was handcuffed by two officers, who led him away without explanation. His wife, who speaks little English, was left behind and kept in the building for ten hours until she was released to her granddaughter, the family says ... Finally, on Friday, a relative from Leon’s native Chile was told he had been taken first to a detention center in Minnesota and then to Guatemala. The hospital, citing privacy rules, would not verify his presence there when contacted by The Morning Call.

Leon came to the United States in 1987, when he was granted political asylum. In his native Chile, according to his granddaughter, he had been imprisoned and tortured under the regime of Augusto Pinochet, the war criminal installed in U.S.-sponsored coup d'etat in 1973. As far as many people are concerned, and I'm one of them, this country still owes all Chileans of that era a debt that may never be repaid. Leon's asylum was a small slice of repayment. But what his granddaughter told The Morning Call links the crimes of memory with the crimes of today.

Leon was granted political asylum in 1987 after surviving torture at the hands of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime, to his granddaughter, Nataly, who asked that her surname not be used because she fears U.S. government retribution against her and her relatives.

Luis Leon just can't win with this country. We engineered a coup in his home country, installing a bloodthirsty fascist who throws Leon in prison so he can be tortured. Then we granted him asylum, and he builds a life for himself in Allentown, Pennsylvania, working in a leather plant. Then, after thirty eight years, he loses his green card, goes to get another one, and he ends up in a hospital in Guatemala with pneumonia, but not before U.S. authorities tell his family that he died in custody. He can be forgiven if he concludes that the Statue of Liberty is drunk. According to The Morning Call, Luis Leon "doesn't plan" to return to the United States, which really says it all about where things are at these days.