A man who describes himself as a United States citizen and a military veteran has been released from immigration custody after months behind detention center walls. According to the reporting, he is a U.S. veteran who was released from the Northwest ICE Detention Center in Tacoma after being held there for nine months, a lengthy stay that has now come to an end as he speaks publicly about what he went through.
The man at the center of the case has been identified as 44-year-old Garnett Smith. He was held at the Northwest ICE Detention Center in Tacoma for nine months before his release. Smith spoke with the station as he was let go, describing his experience inside the facility and the moment he was first taken into custody by authorities.
As for why he ended up in detention, Smith says he was taken into custody over a conviction from 20 years ago. That decades-old case, according to his account, was the basis for the immigration authorities holding him, despite the long stretch of time that had passed since the conviction he referenced.
Smith described the shock of the moment he was detained. The minute they put handcuffs on him and told him he was there for deportation, he said, he could not understand how it was possible. He told them he is a citizen who served in the United States Army, raising his hand and taking an oath to defend the country against threats from overseas and at home, and asked how he could be deported.
The circumstances of his arrest, as he described them, unfolded in the course of an ordinary workday. Smith says he was detained while working at his job at a car dealership in Spokane, where he lives. That is where authorities took him into custody before he was transported and held at the Tacoma facility for the months that followed.
Now that he has been released, Smith is focused on getting back to his family. He traveled back east the day before he spoke about his ordeal, making the trip to reunite with his loved ones after nine months in detention. His account, shared as he walked away from the facility, offers a personal window into a case that saw a self-described citizen and Army veteran held in immigration custody.