U.S. citizen nearly deported for protesting Donald Trump

As if this presidential race couldn't get any weirder, Arizona gives us one of the craziest stories of the 2016 campaign: a U.S. citizen who was almost deported because she protested Donald Trump.

Jacinta Gonzalez was one of the individuals who blocked an Arizona highway last week in an effort to derail a Donald Trump rally in Fountain Hills. Blocking access to one's right to freely gather and express themselves politically won't win you many fans, but what happened next should concern anyone, regardless of your political stance. The political website Mijente reports:

Unlike the two other arrestees, Gonzalez, who is a citizen of the U.S., wasn’t released last night. Instead she was transferred to federal deportation agents to investigate her immigration status as a result of her Latino surname.

“The two others were able to go home but because of my last name I was questioned by ICE and transferred to their custody.” Gonzalez explains, “As I was trying to defend my rights inside, I saw the faces of two children in one of the holding cells. We’re going to continue to fight, to say #Not1More, and Dump Trump.”

This story sounds a lot like the 80s movie Born in East L.A., where Cheech Marin is mistaken for an illegal and deported to Mexico. This, however, isn't quite as funny. If our government can detain you for deportation based solely on your ethnicity, that should concern anyone of any political creed.

As it turns out, deporting American citizens isn't an isolated situation. According to multiple reports and a university study, over 20,000 American citizens were mistakenly detained and put into deportation proceedings over a recent ten year period, a number that even the study's authors admit people would find hard to believe. A recent audit of Arizona's immigration jail, where Gonzalez was detained, found that over 80 people being held there couldn't be deported as scheduled because they were American citizens. And yet, some bureaucrat didn't have the sense to set them free.

While the deportation of American citizens is a scary thing, the bottom line is Gonzalez wouldn't have gotten herself into this situation had she not decided to be a tool and block a highway. It's hard to feel sorry for anyone who puts themselves in that situation. If you try to restrict the freedoms of others, don't cry foul when your own freedoms are restricted.