Just how would an illiterate, disabled person advocate for himself, exactly? I'd like to see the DHS guidelines, if they exist, with respect to diminished capacity individuals. In the rush to deport, they failed to reach out to his community and family and try to find evidence of his actual status. This story could have ended with an even greater tragedy. If Guzman, who wandered Baja for 100 miles eating garbage as he tried to find his way home, had lost his life wandering the Mexican desert in an effort to return to the U.S., immigration officials would have been guilty of nothing less than murder.

A U.S. citizen who had been in the custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department before he disappeared in May after being wrongly deported to Mexico was found this week and ordered released to his family. Pedro Guzman, 29, who is developmentally disabled, was taken into custody Sunday while trying to cross the border at Calexico, Mexico, said Michael Soller, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The ACLU has represented Guzman's family in its attempts to get the federal government to help find him. Guzman, of Lancaster, was transported to the Los Angeles County Jail. On Tuesday at a hearing in the Antelope Valley, Superior Court Judge Carlos Chung ordered him released to his family. Guzman, who cannot read or write, spent much of the 89 days in Baja, California, on foot, avoiding human contact, eating from garbage cans and bathing in rivers, family members said at an afternoon news conference at the ACLU's Los Angeles office. Guzman, who was said to be malnourished and afraid of people, remained at home in Lancaster with relatives. ... After a June hearing, U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson said he was not convinced that he had the authority to order the government to help in the search for Guzman, but that it would be the right and moral thing to do. Rosenbaum said that job ultimately fell to the family. He said Carbajal had to leave her job as a cook at Jack in the Box to look for her son, while other family members traveled repeatedly to Tijuana to help in the search. "The family spent all of its savings and most of the last three months living at a fruit warehouse in Tijuana and sleeping in cars while they searched for Guzman, using up all their savings in the process," Rosenbaum said. "For the past 88 days, our government failed its defining purpose . . . only perhaps redeemed by a family that would not be swayed." ("Disabled Man Found After Being Wrongly Deported
Pedro Guzman is Taken into Custody While Trying to Cross the B0order. Family, ACLU Criticize Immigration Officials, Who Defend Their Actions.")