Honest mistakes and an unforgiving system
Joe Ceballos, the mayor of a solidly pro-Trump, pro-Kris Kobach town in Kansas has been charged with voter fraud and election perjury because he has voted illegally "in every local, state and national election since 1991".
He claims it's an honest mistake. That he didn't know he wasn't a US citizen.
He thought, mistakenly, at the age of 20, that the all-capital-letters — PERMANENT RESIDENT — on his often-renewed federally issued green card made it legal for him to vote.
When a clerk in Comanche County asked a group of students on a field trip whether they wanted to register to vote, Joe Ceballos raised his hand.
While it blows my mind that someone could be that disconnected from politics and basic civics, the real problem as I see it is the fact that the system is unforgiving. People like Rabbiatu Kuyateh were able to remain in the US for decades presumably at the discretion of USCIS and ICE, but they are forever in limbo. DACA recipients are in a similar position.
Rabbiatu Kuyateh arrived in the US 30 years ago, refugee from Sierra Leone's civil war. But for whatever reason, she remained in a status that required her to check in with ICE every year. This year she was deported to Ghana, which apparently promptly deported her back to Sierra Leone.
I'll fault Ghana for refoulement. Based on the news report, I'm going to guess that Kuyateh had a final deportation order that the US couldn't act on (because she had a reasonable fear of persecution in Sierra Leone) or something similar. But since Ghana has now agreed to take deportees from the US, ICE was able to send here there.
One of the basic principles of international law is that you can't deport a person to a country where their "life or freedom would be threatened" on account of "race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion". So Ghana is at fault here (and should no longer be one of the countries that the US can send non-Ghanaian deportees to). But fundamentally, the fact that someone can live in the US for 30 years and still be liable to deportation on a moment's notice like this is a symptom of the unforgiving nature of the system.