Pretty sure. Pretty sure it is.

The question at Quora.com was

What was the strangest case you’ve had as a lawyer?

I love this answer.

Several years ago I represented a man on a series of misdemeanors in a federal district court. He was sentenced to serve a year and a day in jail, and off he went into the custody of the US Marshal.

A few days later I got a call from him. The caller ID said “unknown.” But I answered it anyway, and my guy was on the phone, claiming that he was in Mexico because he’d been deported rather than sent to a proper jail.

Shit. That’s not good. Within seconds my phone started to ring as his wife and other relatives listened to the voicemails he’d left them. Turns out I was the only one answering an “unknown” number.

It made some sense. My client is an American citizen, but he had a very common Latino-sounding name and ICE isn’t exactly known for operating without mistakes. Besides, lots of folks going to prison can’t stop telling the guards that this must be some sort of mistake, so I figured that deportation can’t be much different. So maybe they switched him with someone else in federal custody and he got deported while another guy with the same name is serving out a short misdemeanor sentence. Or maybe they just placed the “take him to jail” paperwork on the “deport this guy” pile. A second-rate Cheech Marin movie was happening in real life.

The real problem was that it was about 4pm on a Friday. Courthouses, prosecutors’ offices and federal law enforcement agencies are just like the rest of the world at 4pm on a Friday – everyone is looking forward to the weekend with one foot out the door. It’s tough to get much done, especially when the client with the Latino-sounding name doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, doesn’t know exactly where in Mexico he is, doesn’t know anyone and doesn’t have a peso to his name. If I lost the call, I had no way of getting him back on the line, let alone finding him again.

So I kept my guy on the line and started making calls. After years in practice in the same court I knew a few folks, so I was able to find the prosecutor, the judge, the case agents and the probation office and get them all to jump in to help within just a few minutes. Within about an hour we had the folks from ICE and the State Department in Mexico on the phone too. We couldn’t get anyone from the Bureau of Prisons to pick up, or anyone from the US end of ICE, but we were sure this was going to get solved. He was going to be found and brought home.

By about 6pm everyone was in place. With the support of the judge and the US Attorney, the US Marshal and the US Probation Office had his identification information and formal sentencing paperwork in hand, and the State Department and ICE officials in Mexico were calling all of their offices and contacts to be ready to find my client. Half of these folks had heard about this after leaving to go home, and had come straight to my office to help, using every available landline and cell phone and taxing my office WiFi with laptops doing searches and sending emails.

We just couldn’t get anyone to come up with the manifests of deportees’ names to figure out exactly where in Mexico he’d been deported to. The US deports a lot of people to Mexico, dropping them off in several locations, but between the ICE officials and consular staffers they were ready to go out and get my guy wherever he was. He was going to be fine. For everyone involved this was a really proud moment of what we can accomplish when we work together. And my client finally started to calm down a little.

The only question was where do the nice Americans in Mexico go to get him? Just where in Mexico was he? My client didn’t know, and didn’t know enough Spanish to ask anyone, so I asked him to pass the phone to the first person he saw, figuring that pantomiming the action of handing the phone off would get someone – anyone – to pick up the phone. That person would at least know what town or city they were in. Just after 6:30 someone finally picked up the phone.

“Hello?” I heard from the other line.

“Hola!” I said. “Soy un abogado en los Estados Unidos, y necesito…”

“uh, I don’t speak any Spanish.” the voice on the other line replied. Only this time it wasn’t my client. Were there more American deportees there with him?

“Oh, OK. Do you happen to know which town you’re in right now?”

“Sure. Milan, New Mexico.”

Shit. Finally something really made sense. “Oh. OK. Is this some kind of a jail or prison?”

“Sure is. We’re at the Cibola County Correctional Center.”

“And my guy’s an inmate there? I suppose he didn’t believe you when you told him he was still in the United States?”

“Nope. Been freaking out about it since he got here. Keeps shouting something about being deported to Mexico. Finally thought we’d let him call his lawyer.”

“Oh. OK. Can you put him back on the phone then?”

“Sure,” he said. And finally with a hint of a giggle.

“Hey,” I said, “I think we’ve finally got this figured out. You’re still in jail, right?”

“Yeah! In Mexico! They deported me!” I could hear the guards start to laugh in the background.

“No, you’re in New Mexico. You’re still in the United States, in a federal prison. In New Mexico. That’s a state.” The people in my office go from professional dedication and concern to peals of laughter.

“Mexico is part of the United States?!?!?!? Since when?” More laughter from the gallery. On both ends.

“Since 1846. We had a war. Been a state since 1912.” Now I’m starting to laugh.

“You sure? Mexico is now part of the United States?”

“Pretty sure. Pretty sure it is.”

I invited everyone assembled for a drink at the bar across the street, and picked up the tab, too. Everyone who got involved in the day’s festivities is still a good and trusted friend. I still get asked by the occasional newbie in the US Attorney’s Office or the at the Marshal’s desk if the story is true. I always answer the same way – “Pretty sure. Pretty sure it is.”
—Greg Hunter, Obstructing justice for a living (2000-present)