Thread: The harrowing journey of the girl who called herself Tika Cortez

By Ed Lavandera, CNN Correspondent
updated 6:07 AM EST, Sat January 7, 2012


Jakadrien Turner is back in the United States, eight months after she was mistakenly deported to Colombia

(CNN) -- Jakadrien Turner's lies last year to authorities in Texas -- including adopting an alter ego and claiming she was from Colombia -- set off a harrowing journey that, according to posts on a Facebook page featuring photographs of her, she seemed to later regret.

By Friday, the troubled teenager was finally back in the United States, after being arrested and then deported to a country that she'd never been in before. It was a months-long escapade that has her family asking questions about how she got to the South American nation and what happened to her while there.

Jakadrien's journey began April 2, 2011, in a Houston, Texas, shopping mall where the 15-year-old was arrested for shoplifting a white shirt, black vest and jeans. It was a petty crime that turned out to be the first step in her changing her identity.

Houston police, according to documents obtained by CNN, show that Turner told authorities that her name was 21-year-old Tika Lanay Cortez and that she was a citizen of Colombia. She listed her address as a home just north of downtown Houston.

A judge assigned Houston attorney William McLellan to represent the woman then known as Tika Cortez on the misdemeanor theft charge. The case was resolved in one day, after she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served. She was then handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Deported teen returns
Deported runaway to return to U.S.


Teen mistakenly deported


Deported Texas teen arrives back in U.S.



McLellan said he never saw any signs that his client was a teenage runaway from Dallas, and not from Colombia as she indicated.


"She didn't make any attempts and cry out that I'm not an illegal immigrant or anything like that," McLellan told CNN. "You would remember someone saying that's not me."


The lawyer said, eight months later, he now believes "she knew what she was doing" -- even if he is hard-pressed to explain why.


Whatever her thinking, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say Jakadrien Turner continued to play the role of "Tika Cortez" during the next two months.


Federal immigration officials say they're "still investigating this matter in order to expeditiously determine the facts of this case."


The attorney representing the Turner family said that the U.S. government is to blame, not the girl, for her deportation.


"I don't buy that she had the wherewithal to be able to bamboozle the government," Ray Jackson says. "You know, kids are scared when they get around authorities. ... To think that you could bamboozle them to create a new identity, it just doesn't make sense."


A U.S. immigration official -- who was not able to speak for attribution, because the investigation is ongoing -- said that that the girl then known as Tika Cortez waived her right to an immigration attorney and did not fight deportation proceedings.


According to U.S. immigration officials, they'd never come across anyone by the name Tika Cortez. Her fingerprints did not match anyone in law enforcement databases, nor was there a match for the name Jakadrien Turner. And the background check "revealed no information to invalidate her claims," the officials said.


Colombian government officials then interviewed Jakadrien and issued her the needed travel documents and "full Colombian citizenship," according to the U.S. immigration officials.


That meant that, six months after running away from her Dallas home, the 15-year-old girl was on her way to Colombia -- for the first time in her life.


She arrived in Bogota on May 23, according to the Colombian government.


What exactly happened, once she arrived in the South American nation, is unclear.


Dana Ames has been advising the Turner family in the search for Jakadrien for almost a year in her capacity as the director of the United Response Search and Rescue Team, a non-profit agency that helps families find missing loved ones.


She and members of Jakadrien's family say that various internet postings they discovered show that two Colombian men befriended the runaway teenager and they spent a lot of time together during her time in Houston.


"So you think it's a coincidence she came up with a Colombian name and said she was from Colombia?" said Ames. "Otherwise she is absolutely the smartest, most creative 15-year-old child I know of. I can't wrap my brain around the idea that she did this all on her own."


After arriving in Colombia, a Facebook page and Twitter feed arose tied to someone using her adopted moniker, Tika Cortez. If the postings were indeed written by the runaway teen, they offer a glimpse into the tormented troubles of a lost teenager.


The writer claims to be from Bridgetown, Barbados, and studied at Texas Southern University, neither of which are true of Jakadrien Turner. The writings also indicate that their author spent some time working in a telephone call center and as a maid in Bogota.


But the most dominant theme of the Facebook posts, which went up between June and November of last year, is that the person identified as Tika Cortez is "BORED AS HELL." The writer also talks about smoking marijuana and being part of tortured and volatile relationships.


A couple of times, the writer references her life back in the United States including:

-- On May 25: "back home in Colombia got deported. .. really missed everyone in Houston..."

-- On August 12: "well was in jail, now I'm free man am still feel like I'm loke up in this country..."
-- And on June 30: "I'm having to many problems in mi life, just found out I can't even go bak to the states in another 5 years..."

Only once does the writer appear to cryptically allude to the journey that landed her in Colombia. That came on a July 28 Facebook post that reads, "I'm f**king tired I just want a f**king time machine, and rewind all the bull**it I did wrong man OMG.. I'm never going to be happy here."


The tone is far different in a more recent post from October, one month before Colombian authorities took Jakadrien into custody. It includes a series of pictures uploaded under the banner, "familia, me happy 4 once in the mountains."


For Jakadrien Turner's grandmother, who spent months monitoring these Facebook postings, this was difficult to read. Still, she told CNN that, despite it all, she is grateful that her granddaughter is alive.


"I always feared she would be killed," Lorene Turner said.


Now, the teenage girl is back home in Texas -- alive in a place she hasn't been in over a year, near her family.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/07/us/tex...Top+Stories%29

I suspect this harrowing journey was actually an adventure of her own design gone awry.

dallasobserver.com
By Leslie Minora
Sat., Jan. 7 2012 at 10:49 AM


Jakadrien Turner, home at last, with grandmother Lorene on her right and mother Johnisa on her left

At 11 a.m. Friday morning, Lorene Turner got the call: Her granddaughter, Jakadrien Turner, who had run away from her Oak Cliff home and her life as a student at Kimball High School, was on a flight home from Colombia. Eleven hours later, the strong but exhausted grandmother finally walked down the international arrivals chute at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport next to the 15-year-old she hadn't hugged in more than a year.

The teen runaway had traveled from Dallas to New Orleans before arriving in Houston, where she was arrested for shoplifting and deported to Colombia under a false identity she provided police. The journey was a long one, and while last night marks the end of her saga as a runaway, most of what happened after April 2010, when she left Oak Cliff, remains a long list of questions.

After more than two hours' worth of immigration procedures and questioning by authorities following her arrival at about 7 p.m. on a Delta flight from Atlanta, Jakadrien, her mother Johnisa Turner and Lorene, flanked by armed guards and their lawyer Ray Jackson, slowly walked from the international arrivals gate to the parking lot as reporters swarmed and news cameras rolled. All three appeared to alternate between choking back tears and suppressing smiles that occasionally cracked through. They held hands but gave little indication of the emotion evoked by the homecoming.

Jackson, Turner's attorney, was the only one who addressed the crowd of reporters gathered at the terminal. "She's happy to be home," he said, but wouldn't offer much more, saying that the family would comment in a few days, after they've rested. "We want to respect that it's been a long flight and a long day."

The story of Jakadrien's runaway, deportation and homecoming picked up speed throughout the week, leaving a wake of unanswered questions, many with troubling implications. WFAA's Rebecca Lopez broke the news on Tuesday night in a story that detailed the steps that led to the teen's deportation and discovery. In Houston, she gave police a fake name -- Tika Cortez -- the name of an illegal immigrant from Colombia who had an outstanding warrant for her arrest. [It's still unclear why Jakadrien chose the name. CNN reports, "According to U.S. immigration officials, they'd never come across anyone by the name Tika Cortez. Her fingerprints did not match anyone in law enforcement databases, nor was there a match for the name Jakadrien Turner."]


The exact missteps are similarly unclear, but ICE deported Jakadrien to Colombia under the assumed identity. While in Colombia, Jakadrien had a Cuban boyfriend, according to her Facebook page, and she became pregnant.


By combing through information on Facebook and working with police, Lorene located Jakadrien in Colombia and sparked the effort that brought her granddaughter home Friday night. "I'm real nosy ... I'm a beautician," Lorene told us not long after she received the news that Jakadrien was coming home. Her beauty salon, which also serves as a notary, is coated inside and out in hot-pink paint. with the "beauty salon" signage painted in black. A few spots of peeling paint and broken-in salon chairs reveal the character of the well-kept shop she opened in the early 1970s.


The grandmother who remembers Jakadrien always confiding in her couldn't imagine how this could happen to her "sweet, smart" granddaughter who hadn't started dating, had never been on a plane -- and never learned Spanish. She speculates that the teen's initial runaway plan was sidelined by human traffickers who enacted the elaborate scheme that landed Jakadrien passage between international borders and Colombian citizenship. Lorene says Jakadrien ran away with a group of "fast" girls from high school who posted videos online of themselves dancing in ways that made her think, "They're gonna knock their wombs out of place."


No matter what, Lorene says, she's not mad. "Everyone's bad when they're little," she says. "Thank the Lord" she's safe and alive.


Jackadrien's reasons for running away are as unclear as the procedural loopholes or elaborate plans that allowed her to move to Colombia. While her coming home is a momentary resolution, there is much more to discover: whether she's a victim of trafficking, why she gave police that particular assumed name and whether anyone else provided her with that name, what her life was like in Colombia, who fathered her unborn child, and how she's holding up after such a year. Though last night's homecoming felt like a resolution; it's also a new beginning for Jackadrien and a reason to keep asking: How could this happen?

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfa..._questions.php

arabnews.com
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA | AP
Updated: Jan 7, 2012 22:08


Jakadrien Turner, 15, walks with her grandmother Lorene Turner, left, and mother Johnisa Turner, right, at Dallas Fort Worth Airport on Friday. (AP)

DALLAS: A Texas teenager who was deported to Colombia after claiming to be an illegal immigrant was returned to the United States and remains at the center of an international mystery over how a minor could be sent to a country where she is not a citizen.

Jakadrien Lorece Turner's family has questioned why US officials didn't do more to verify her identity and say the 15-year-old is not fluent in Spanish and had no ties to Colombia. While many facts of the case remain unclear, US and Colombian officials have pointed fingers over who is responsible.

Jakadrien arrived in Dallas on Friday evening and was reunited with her family. She was flanked by her mother, grandmother and law enforcement when she emerged from the international gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport shortly before 10 p.m.

"She's happy to be home," the family's attorney, Ray Jackson, said, adding that the family would not be issuing any statements for now. He said the family was "ecstatic" to have Jakadrien back in Texas and they plan to "do what we can to make sure she gets back to a normal life."

Immigration experts say that while cases of mistaken identity are rare, people can slip through the cracks, especially if they don't have legal help or family members working on their behalf. But they say US immigration authorities had the responsibility to determine if a person is a citizen.

Jakadrien's saga began when the teen ran away more than a year ago. Houston police said the girl was arrested on April 2, 2011, for misdemeanor theft in that city and claimed to be Tika Lanay Cortez, a Colombian woman born in 1990. It was unclear if she has been living under that name.

Houston police said in a statement that her name was run through a database to determine if she was wanted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement but the results were negative. She was then turned over to the Harris County jail and booked on the theft charge.

The county sheriff's office said it ran her through the available databases and did the interviews necessary to establish her identity and immigration status in the country, with negative results. A sheriff's office employee recommended that an immigration detainer be put on her, and upon her release from jail she was turned over to ICE.

US immigration officials insist they followed procedure and found nothing to indicate that the girl wasn't a Colombian woman living illegally in the country.

An ICE official said the teen claimed to be Cortez throughout the criminal proceedings in Houston and the ensuing deportation process, in which an immigration judge ultimately ordered her back to Colombia.

Standard procedure before any deportation is to coordinate with the other country in order to establish that person is from there, the ICE official said.

The ICE official said the teenager was interviewed by a representative from the Colombian Consulate and that country's government issued her a travel document to enter Colombia.

Jakadrien was issued travel documents at the request of US officials using information they provided, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Colombian officials are investigating what kind of verification was conducted by its Houston consulate to issue the temporary passport.

The girl was given Colombian citizenship upon arriving in that country, the ICE official said.

According to the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the girl was enrolled in the country's "Welcome Home" program after she arrived there. She was given shelter, psychological assistance and a job at a call center, a statement from the agency said.

"If she looked like an adult, and she told them she was a 21-year-old Colombian citizen, and she didn't show up in their databases, this was inevitable," said Albert Armendariz, an immigration attorney from El Paso.

Jakadrien's family says they have no idea why she ended up in Colombia. Johnisa Turner said the girl is a US citizen who was born in Dallas and was not fluent in Spanish. She said neither she nor the teen's father had ties to Colombia. Jakadrien's grandmother, Lorene Turner, called the deportation a "big mistake somebody made."

http://arabnews.com/world/article560023.ece