The mother of a German green card holder is denouncing that her son was "violently interrogated" upon his return to Boston's Logan Airport, an ordeal that included being stripped naked and placed under a cold shower.
Fabian Schmidt's family said he was then taken to an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Rhode Island, and they are not sure why he is being held NHPR reported.
"It was just said that his green card was flagged," said Astrid Senior, Schmidt's mother. She added that immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card and placed on a mat in a bright room with little food or water. He was also sleep deprived and denied access to his anxiety and depression medication.
The combination of factors led Schmidt to collapse. Officials then took him to the Mass General Hospital, from where he was taken to the ICE facility. His family and partner are working with the German consulate, hoping to release him on bail.
Hilton Beckham, CBP's assistant commissioner of public affairs, said in a statement that the claims are "blatantly false," and pointed at a misdemeanor charge for having marijuana in his car in 2015.
"When an individual is found with drug-related charges and tries to reenter the country, officers will take proper action," Beckham said. His mother said that the charges were dismissed after laws changed in California around possession.
Scmidt's family has set up a GoFund Me site to help cover his legal costs. As of Monday noon, the fund had almost reached $4,000 out of the $5,000 expected from 71 different donations.
"Fabian was returning home to New England from a short holiday in Germany where he was visiting friends and family. Upon arrival in Boston he was detained by border control, his perfectly valid Green Card had been tagged because he had failed to attend a hearing for which he had never received an invitation for. (It was sent to an address where he was no longer living). To compound this error, he had just recently been provided with a new replacement Green Card since he had lost the original one," Schmidt's family explained in the site.
The message goes on to show amazement at why "such treatment is deemed necessary for such a disproportional reaction to a problem entirely of the Immigration bureaucracy's own making."
Schmidt and his mother moved to the U.S. in 2007 and got green cards a year later. He is an electrical engineer and has an eight-year-old daughter along with his partner, who is a cardiologist.
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