A Homeland Security spokesperson erupted this week after attorney Victoria Slatton accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of unlawfully arresting her client, who Slatton says is an American-born U.S. citizen.
Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morale, a 22-year-old woman whose lawyer says was born in Maryland, was arrested last Sunday by ICE officers and held at a detention facility in Baltimore, Maryland, CBS News reported this week.
In a series of now-viral videos, Slatton has said that she’s been unable to contact Morale, who, despite a Maryland District Court judge ruling that Morale could not be deported from the United States, was later transferred to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, and later, to an ICE detention facility in Texas. Slatton said she only learned of her client’s transfers through public records.
Ticia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, would later lash out at Slatton’s claims in a statement to CBS News, and insisted that Morale was “not a U.S. citizen.”
“She did not provide a valid U.S. birth certificate or any evidence in support of her claim that she is a U.S. citizen,” McLaughlin told CBS News. “[And], any allegation that ICE does not allow detainees to contact legal assistance is false. All detainees have access to phones to communicate with lawyers."
Slatton openly refuted both claims from DHS.
“It is an indisputable fact that she was born inside the United States. I've seen her birth certificate. We have immunization records. We have multiple affidavits from people who were there at her birth,” she said, CBS News reported.
“I have not been able to talk to her. I was supposed to be able to speak to her in a confidential meeting...when we connected to that meeting, we were told that she was transferred. Her family was told she's being deported, thank goodness that was not the case."