INSIDE

Border turns away Native American

By Meg Olson

A Native American living on the Tsawwassen First Nation is leveling charges of discrimination at Point Roberts Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers after they refused him entry to the United States, questioned his heritage, and took away his ‘green card.’

“The reason why he believes they’re giving him a hard time is because of his physical appearance,” said Len Saunders, attorney for Peter Roberts, a 54-year-old dentist. Roberts declined to be interviewed. “They’re looking at him and saying you don’t have the look. It’s because he’s light skinned. It’s reverse discrimination.”

Roberts says he is 50 percent American Indian, but his coloring is that of his Caucasian mother rather than his 100-percent American Indian father. Saunders said his client has documents from the Campbell River Indian Band confirming his heritage. He has held a special registration card issued by U.S. immigration authorities since the 1960s, which identifies him as a Canadian-born American Indian entitled to free passage across the U. S. border under the provisions of the 1794 Jay Treaty.

After years traveling to the U.S. without incident, Roberts told Saunders, he began to be questioned about his status by Point Roberts border officers last summer. He was denied entry on his way to church in September 2007, and repeatedly asked to voluntarily abandon his “green card,” which was taken from him in November.

CBP public affairs officer Michael Milne said officers based their decision to seize the card on information gathered in their examination of his status. “If we suspect at any time someone is getting benefits from his status he isn’t entitled to we can pull a card back and ask an immigration judge to decide,” he said.
On January 18 at a Blaine immigration hearing, a lawyer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stated they had documents that called into question the validity of Roberts’ claim to 50-percent American Indian blood. “In the next hearing we intend to establish through documents whether or not that is corroborated,” Milne said. The hearing has been continued until March 28.

Asked to comment on Saunders’ statement that the color of his client’s skin led to the questioning of his status, ICE public affairs officer Lorie Dankers said “that’s a claim they can make but an immigration judge will eventually decide if the documentation is sufficient.”

“They’re saying the burden of proof is on Mr. Roberts but he’s already done that,” Saunders said, with documents issued by his band. It will set a dangerous precedent, he said, if tribal documents are no longer recognized as sufficiently valid to establish the status of American Indians.

Milne said CBP could not seize identification issued by tribes or other nations, only those issued by the U.S., but was applying more scrutiny to the validity of identification documents.

“You’ll see with the whole Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative phenomenon we’re paying a lot closer attention to documents used to enter the U.S. and we have since 9/11,” he said. “With more and more scrutiny we are finding more and more fraudulent documents.”

He added the Department of Homeland Security was working with tribes to develop identification that meets rising national standards for secure documentation.