EDITORIAL PEDRO'S STORY IT'S REALLY A TALE ABOUT IMMIGRATION POLICY IN CHAOS.

THE strange tale of Pedro Guzman, a developmentally disabled U.S. citizen from Lancaster who was mistakenly deported to Mexico in May, reveals just how flawed the nation's immigration policy is.

Guzman was returned to his family Wednesday, and his long ordeal of trying to escape the foreign and hostile country to get back home seems to be over. His family says the experience left him badly scarred, that he's not the same person he was a couple of months ago.

His tragedy should get us all thinking about what it says about the state of the nation's immigration laws.

Guzman's deportation appears to have been an honest mistake. The developmentally disabled man can't read or write. He was in jail for trespassing when authorities decided, without contacting his family, that he ought to be sent to Mexico.

It's a cold and inhumane system that would separate a man with such limited abilities from his family and dump him alone and without resources in a foreign country. But mistakes happen all too often when public policies are so confused and politicized that they don't serve anyone.

America has needed a sound immigration policy for decades, but year after year, reform has been derailed by extremists on both sides who want either all carrot or all stick. This year, federal lawmakers again passed up a chance at reform while the harmful effects of uncontrolled and illegal immigration only gets worse.

Pedro Guzman's experience is just one example of why we need clear immigration laws that everyone understands. In the absence of this, individual cities and government agencies take matters into their own hands, interpreting and applying federal law as they want.

Two weeks ago, a federal judge struck down an attempt by one frustrated city, Hazleton, Pa., to write its own extreme anti-immigration laws. Los Angeles long ago chose to ignore federal laws in this regard.

We are divided as a nation over whether to build a massive and expensive wall of dubious effectiveness along our border with Mexico or granting amnesty across the board.

What happened to Pedro Guzman is an indictment of the gutless men and women in Washington, D.C., who are too afraid of angering their political bases to embrace reform.

The result inevitably will be more human tragedies like this whether it's because of breakdowns in immigration policy, health care or the many other critical issues on which we are so deeply divided.