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U.S. Citizen Released After 18 Months in Houston Immigration Jail

January 19, 2016 (1 min read)

Jacqueline Stevens, Jan. 18, 2016 - "On January 5, 2016, Lorenzo Palma, with a lawyer finally by his side (Nashville-based civil rights attorney Andrew Free), won his release from the Houston CCA immigration jail.  Ever since immigration judge Saul Greenstein flagged the possibility that Mr. Palma, 39, unbeknownst to himself, might have acquired U.S. citizenship from his mother, who, born in Mexico in 1948, unbeknownst to herself, might have acquired it from her father, the family had been on a scavenger hunt to find evidence the government already had to prove Lorenzo's maternal grandfather Lazaro Palma was born in the United States and resided there 10 years, five of which were after the age of 16.  The search required the location of decades-old records, ranging from Lazaro Palma's 1914 Texas birth certificate to a 1950 manifest to various other documents and affidavits, all of which cost the family time, worry, and money."