It’s an American citizen’s worst nightmare. James Makowski has been a legal citizen of the U.S. all his life, but his citizenship was challenged when a fingerprint-sharing mess up sent him to a maximum security prison to await deportation. The Chicago resident plead guilty to charges of drug use in December 2010, and was sentenced to serve his time at a treatment facility. While there, investigators looking for criminal and undocumented immigrants picked up his name on their reports. He was flagged as illegally in the country, and taken to a maximum-security prison. Law enforcement tries to focus on deporting the criminal immigrants in the U.S., rather than the innocent men and women here.

The law officials planned to send Makowski “back” to his country-of-origin, though he had no other residency. The fingerprinting machine allegedly mixed him up with another offender. Since being released from the prison, Makowski has started a lawsuit against the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. He believes that they caused him to suffer unjust and unnecessary harm because of their negligence and mistake. This lawsuit marks the first legal challenge to Secure Communities, and argues that the two entities violated the Privacy Act of 1974 with their foolish choices.

A lawyer for the National Immigrant Justice Center, which is a nonprofit advocacy group in Chicago, says that both departments repeatedly defile the Privacy Act. According to his claim on behalf of Makowski, the FBI should not be sharing so much data, especially if they have indications that someone could be a legal American citizen. President George Bush started the use of Secure Communities in 2008, and the FBI has sent more than 16 million fingerprints into the immigration database. However, more than 900,000 of those immigration fingerprints were only “potential” immigration violators. The other 15 million fingerprints belong to U.S. citizens like Makowski. Their transmission into this database violates the American citizen Privacy Act, according to the suit.

The Los Angeles Times says that only 26 of Illinois’ 102 police jurisdictions use Secure Communities to flag down potential illegal immigrants. Some departments believe that sharing fingerprints with other immigration officials could make witnesses less likely to cooperate with police, especially if the criminal truly is an undocumented citizen. Other officials in Illinois only use Securities Commission sparingly. In Washington D.C., legislators have approved a bill which will reduce the ability to use Secure Communities in certain areas. They also determined that individuals who are detected by Secure Communities must be held only at the request of the Department of Homeland Security. In lieu of Makowski’s case, the Chicago government will present a bill similar to the D.C. one in hopes of avoiding another mishap like this one.

As this story proves, there is a possibility that you can be charged with illegal immigration, even if you are innocent. Mix-ups in paperwork, finger prints, names, or other records can become a horrible mishap for an innocent individual. Don’t let your rights be stripped away because an unjust charge. Instead, you need to get an immigration lawyer on your side to prove that you are a documented resident in the United States. With a lawyer present to fight hard for you, you may be able to remain in America and put your immigration worries behind you. Your lawyer will need to pull out all the evidence he or she can find and work with you diligently to create a convincing line of defense. Like Makowski, you may discover that the government was wrong in your case. If they made a mistake, you can also sue for punitive damages due to the trials you suffered at their expense.