Amber Alert Baby On Way Back To Parents


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PLANT CITY - A baby taken from her mother in Plant City on Monday and recovered in Manatee County this afternoon is expected to be reunited with her parents soon.

Investigators have left the Manatee County Sheriff's Office with 2-month-old Sandra Cruz-Francisco and are driving back to Plant City to return Sandra to her mother. The child is unharmed and safe.

A woman accused of taking a 2-month-old child from her mother turned the child in to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office about 1 p.m., investigators say.

Manatee deputies received an anonymous call this afternoon that someone had information regarding an Amber Alert issued for the missing child, Manatee sheriff's spokesman Dave Bristow said. Deputies were told to go to the 6000 block of 34th St. W. in Bradenton.

When deputies arrived, the girl and the woman accused of taking her were waiting for them. The woman had the child in her arms and told investigators, "here is the Amber Alert baby," a Manatee sheriff's office news release states.

Deputies are holding the woman until Plant City officers can speak with her. Manatee deputies spoke with her but would not release details of the conversation.

The Amber Alert has been canceled.

The incident began Monday afternoon when a woman claiming to be an immigration official convinced the girl's mother that handing the child over would protect the family from being deported, the mother said today.

Rosa Sirilo-Francisco, 30, of Plant City, said she gave her baby to an immigration official named Janet and only later decided Janet wasn't who she claimed to be.

Police said this afternoon that they would like to speak with 43-year-old Amaila Tabata Pereira, who also goes by the names Alalia Rivera, Amalia Segui and Almalia Maldonao. Police said later this afternoon that they think the woman posed as "Janet" before taking the child.

"We're fairly confident that she is the person who had taken the baby," Plant City police spokesman Cpt. Darrell Wilson said.

No charges have been filed. But investigators expect to charge Pereira with the child's kidnapping, a Plant City Police Department news release states.

Sirilo-Francisco said that about 3 p.m. Monday she took her daughter to the Plant City Health Department office at 302 N. Michigan Ave. for a routine checkup.

She said that's when she was approached by Janet, a woman she didn't know. Janet claimed to be an immigration official and said immigration officers were waiting for Sirilo-Francisco and the child's father at their home to deport them to Mexico. Janet claimed she wanted to help the couple, but she had to take the baby with her, Sirilo-Francisco said.

Janet and Sirilo-Francisco left in Janet's vehicle, and they rode to a nearby Kash 'n Karry, where they discussed how Janet would help the couple avoid deportation. Sirilo-Francisco, who said she was scared, believed Janet. During the conversation, Sirilo-Francisco also noticed there was a child's car seat in Janet's vehicle.

The two then rode to the farm where the child's father works as a laborer.

Janet told him what she had told Sirilo-Francisco.

Sirilo-Francisco and Janet then went back to the health department, where Sirilo-Francisco had left her own car. She handed over the child there, and Janet said she would give the girl back at 8 a.m. Thursday. Janet told them she was taking the child to Miami.

When Sirilo-Francisco came home and told a relative in Georgia what had happened, the relative told her that what happened isn't how United States government works.

Afraid that her baby had been abducted, Sirilo-Francisco told police what happened. Police told her Janet didn't work with the immigration department, Sirilo-Francisco said.

Sirilo-Francisco is still worried about getting deported, but she said she was more concerned about getting their baby back.

Wilson said he did not know all the details of Sirilo-Francisco's story but that there was no reason to believe she fabricated her tale to police.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking into her story.

"We commend the law enforcement community in Florida for uniting to bring this baby to safety," immigration spokesman Ivan L. Ortiz-Delgado wrote. "The impersonation of a federal agent is a serious crime and ICE has launched an investigation into the matter."

When asked about Sirilo-Francisco's immigration status, he wrote: "As mentioned earlier, ICE has launched an investigation into this matter; therefore, the investigation is ongoing and in order to preserve its integrity, we have no further comments."