A Purdue University junior from Puerto Rico was asked by employees at an Indiana CVS to prove his immigration status to purchase over-the-counter cold medication.
Jose Guzman Payano said he showed his Puerto Rican driver’s license, to satisfy a requirement for a government-issued identification be shown for the medicine, but was still turned down on his visit to a CVS in Lafayette on October 25.
‘A Puerto Rican license is a US-issued license and Puerto Rico is a part of the US,’ insisted Jose. He added that not even a US passport was acceptable, nor an explanation that Puerto Rico is a US commonwealth, the engineering student says.
Purdue University junior Jose Guzman Payano (pictured) says he went to a CVS in Lafayette, Indiana, on October 25 in need of cold medicine
Jose Guzman Payano (pictured) says he was denied an over-the-counter medicine by employees at a CVS in Lafayette, Indiana, when they questioned his immigration status during a visit to the store on October 25
Jose Guzman Payano says an employee at the CVS in Lafayette, Indiana (pictured), wouldn’t accept his Puerto Rican drivers license or US passport as valid, government-issued identification to purchase Mucinex, as required by law (File photo)
But the store employee did ask to see his visa, even though he wasn’t required to. ‘I was in shock at that time’, said Guzman Payano, reports KHOU.
After Jose reached out to his mom, Arlene Payano Burgos, she said she called the store from her home in Puerto Rico and was told by a shift manager that CVS policy specifically requires that employees ‘not accept driver’s licenses from Puerto Rico’.
‘No license issued from Puerto Rico is accepted as a valid form of identification in CVS stores! This is an outrage!’ she wrote in a Facebook post she wrote the same day of the incident, and which has gone viral since.
A government-issued identification is required by law for purchasing cold remedies that my contain certain drugs, including pseudoephedrine, which drug users and dealers use to make methamphetamine.
Jose’s license alone should have been sufficed, insisted the mom.
A spokesman for CVS told DailyMail.com the chain agrees with the mom, and that the matter was investigated.
‘We do, in fact, recognize Puerto Rican driver’s licenses to be a valid form of US identification,’ said the chain in a statement released by the spokesperson.
‘We are reinforcing with employees the correct procedures to follow when requesting information that is required by law for the purchase of certain over-the-counter medications.’
Jose had gone in to purchase the cold remedy Mucinex and said that still being denied after he showed the proper identification as required by law left him unnerved.
‘I was shook by what had happened,’ Jose told KHOU.
After Jose reached out to his mom, Arlene Payano Burgos (pictured) said she called the store from her home in Puerto Rico and was told by a shift manager that CVS policy specifically requires that employees ‘not accept driver’s licenses from Puerto Rico’
The engineering student’s mom Arlene Payano Burgos expressed fury over the denial in a post on Facebook that same day, which went viral. ‘No license issued from Puerto Rico is accepted as a valid form of identification in CVS stores! This is an outrage’! she wrote
His mother’s Facbook post, shared 10,000 times, angrily vented at the employee who turned her son down and even asked to see his visa.
‘Needless to say my son, or any other consumer, is not obligated to disclose his immigration status to any CVS employee!’ the mom wrote in the Facebook post.
‘What caused this employee to ask him for his visa? Was it his accent? Was it his skin color? Was it the Puerto Rican flag on the license’? she asks. ‘Whatever triggered her to discriminate against my son embodies exactly what is wrong in the United States of America today.’
The mother’s post goes further to say she was grateful her son was not picked up by US Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents.
‘I guess I should be thankful that he wasn’t thrown in the back of an ICE van and interrogated, or worse’, she wrote, adding that she couldn’t help being angry, outraged and ‘disgusted’.
A CVS spokesman acknowledged to DailyMail.com that the incident at the chain’s store in Lafayette was investigated and released the above statement with how the company was addressing the matter with its workers
She blamed ‘the current issues we are experiencing in the United States related to immigration, ICE raids, and rampant racism,’ on President Donald Trump.
‘What happened to my son today is not unlike what many other families have had to face since Trump was sworn into office and it’s completely unacceptable,’ the mother wrote, in references to the president’s border policies which have drawn criticism.
‘Enough is enough,’ the mother says. ‘The men that signed the Declaration of Independence stated that all men are created equal. Our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves’.
She promises that ‘as a Puerto Rican, a United States citizen, a mother, a union member, a wife, and a human being, I will not let this stand!’ and calls for friends to help spread her message and Purdue students to boycott CVS, ‘especially the Puertorriqueños’.
In a follow up post Sunday, she expressed thanks for an ‘outpouring of support’ and requests that no one ‘harass or threaten any CVS staff in relation to this incident.’
‘Let’s all be the better person in this situation, she adds, before posting the same message in Spanish.
In a follow up post Sunday, Arlene Payano Burgos expressed thanks for an ‘outpouring of support’ and requests that no one ‘ harass or threaten any CVS staff in relation to this incident’