Thread: A Texas Teenager Who Doesn't Even Speak Spanish Was Mistakenly Deported To Colombia

A Texas teenager is being held at a Colombia detention center after she was mistakenly deported by immigration officials in April of 2011, according to Rebecca Lopez of WFAA-TV in Dallas.

The saga began when Jakadrien Turner ran away from home in November 2010. Five months later, the 15-year-old was arrested in Houston for theft.

According to CBS News, the runaway gave police a fake name that belonged to an illegal immigrant from Colombia.

While WFAA maintains that officials did not confirm Jakadrien's identity, an African-American who speaks no Spanish, before sending her to South America, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the station that nothing "raised a red a red flag" when it tried to verify the young girl's identity through fingerprints and database searches.

An ICE agent told the Daily News that Jakadrien used a false name, with no outstanding warrants, during her trial.

Jakadrien's grandmother, Lorene Turner, told WFAA she had been searching for the missing teen for over a year, but with the help of a Dallas detective and Facebook was able to locate her deported granddaughter.

According to Andrew O'Reilly of FoxNews Latino, Jakadrien found work as maid in Colombia, but is currently locked up at a detention center at the request of the U.S. embassy. Colombian officials, however, are still refusing to release her.

The ICE released a statement on Tuesday and is still looking into the case.

"ICE takes these allegations very seriously," said ICE Director of Public Affairs Brian Hale. "At the direction of [the Department of Homeland Security], ICE is fully and immediately investigating this matter in order to expeditiously determine the facts of this case."

According to WFAA, civil rights groups plan to address President Barack Obama about the matter today.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jakad...#ixzz1iceVXBOA



guess she wasn't able to speak during this process....It seems none of them can do the job right.

That's what happens when you lie to the Police! She should've said her name was "Betty Smith"

Or Tawander Riley!!!!

I've heard reports that she insisted she was an IA from Colombia over and over and when they couldn't prove she wasn't away she went.

washingtonpost.com
By Associated Press,
Updated: Thursday, January 5, 5:54 PM

EL PASO, Texas — Immigration officials say they’re investigating the circumstances under which a Texas teen was deported to Colombia after providing a false identity.

The family of 15-year-old Jakadrien Lorece (Ja-KAY-dree-un Lo-REES) Turner says she ran away more than a year ago. She was located in Bogota by Dallas police, with help from Colombian and U.S. officials.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Thursday that Turner maintained after being arrested in Houston for theft and through the deportation proceedings that she was a Colombian adult here illegally. The official said Turner was interviewed by the Colombian consulate, which gave her documents to travel there.

Turner’s grandmother, Lorene Turner, says officials should’ve done more to identify her.

Colombia’s Family Welfare agency said the Foreign Minister was handling the matter. The Foreign Ministry had no comment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...s=rss_national

Teen missing since 2010 found in Colombia after being mistakenly deported

Deseret News
By Elizabeth Stuart,
Published: Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012 3:57 p.m. MST

DALLAS — A Dallas teen who has been missing for more than a year turned up in Colombia Tuesday after police discovered she had been mistakenly deported.


Fifteen-year-old Jakadrien Turner, upset over the loss of a grandfather and her parents' divorce, ran away from home in November of 2010, WFAA-TV reported. She found her way to Houston, where she was arrested for theft and gave police a fake name. The name, police found, belonged to a 22-year-year-old illegal immigrant who had warrants out for her arrest. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement took Turner's fingerprints, but something went wrong and the teen was deported to Colombia.


Click to enlarge
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From the archive

• Officials investigate case of deported Texas teen – Jan. 5, 2012

An increasing number of U.S. citizens are getting caught up in immigration enforcement proceedings, the New York Times reported. Hard statistics are difficult to come by, but according to one study, between 2006 and 2008, 82 American citizens in two Arizona detention Centers were held for periods as long as a year.


ICE has rapidly ramped up deportation efforts under the Obama administration, sending record numbers of immigrants back to their home countries. Under ICE's leading program, known as Secure Communities, the fingerprints of people booked at local jails are checked against Department of Homeland Security databases. If the fingerprints suggest a person may be in the country illegally, federal immigration agents can issue a detainer allowing local officials to hold a person for 48 hours while their immigration status is investigated.


In response to the growing number of incidents involving citizens, ICE launched a toll-free hot line last week that people being held on immigration detainers can call if they believe they are U.S. citizens or have been the victim of a crime.


ICE Director John Morton told the New York Times the agency gives "immediate and close attention" to anyone who claims to be a citizen. Detaining an American for immigration investigation is a potential wrongful arrest.


"We don't have the power to detain citizens," Morton said. "We obviously take any allegation that someone is a citizen very seriously."


Los Angeles resident Antonio Montejano, though, said his objections fell on deaf ears. Montejano spent four nights in jail on an immigration order after he was arrested for shoplifting in November.


"I told every officer I was in front of that I'm an American citizen, and they didn't believe me," he said.


In Turner's case, the teen's grandmother, Lorene Turner, asserted ICE "didn't do their work." Jakadrien Turner is AfricannAmerican and does not speak Spanish.


"How do you deport a 15-year-old and send her to Colombia without a passport ... without anything?"

When Jakadrien Turner arrived in South America, Colombian officials gave her a work permit and released her, according to WFAA-TV . The teen has reportedly been working as a housekeeper.


"She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was," Lorene Turner said.


Lorene Turner helped Dallas police track Jakadrien Turner down using social media. U.S. authorities found an address and picked up the teen. She is now being held in a Colombian detention facility.


"I feel like she will come home," Lorene Turner said. "I just need help and prayer."
ICE is investigating the incident.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7...ml?s_cid=rss-5

Grapevine: Runaway Teen Mistakenly Deported

Jan 5, 2012 Missing Texas girl sent to Colombia

http://video.foxnews.com/v/136818842...ylist_id=87262

You can probably guess where this is headed!

How a Dallas teenager convinced the government she was an illegal immigrant to get deported and wound up pregnant and imprisoned in Colombia

dailymail.co.uk
By Louise Boyle

Last updated at 10:24 PM on 5th January 2012

Jakadrien Turner, 15, was arrested in Texas and gave police a fake name, claiming she was an illegal immigrant

Facebook profile discovered by her grandmother

Barack Obama briefed about case this morning


An American teenager managed to convince police, a court judge and U.S. immigration that she was an illegal immigrant before having herself deported to Colombia.

Jakadrien Turner, 15, ran away from home in Dallas, Texas in November 2010 after becoming distraught over the death of her grandfather and parents' divorce.

She was arrested in Houston for theft in April last year. The teenager, then 14, gave officers a fake name - Tika Lanay Cortez - claiming she was a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from Colombia.

She was convicted of theft under the name Cortez. Her defense attorney also believed that to be her true identity.


Deported: Jakadrien Turner, 15, ran away from home in Dallas Texas in 2010 and ended up being deported to Colombia after immigration officials mistakenly tagged her as an illegal immigrant


Another life: A picture allegedly posted on Facebook by Jakadrien Turner looking out across the mountains in Colombia

While serving time in prison, she was referred to the State Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who she also convinced that she came from Colombia.

After a thorough investigation, it was decided she would be deported. However prior to this, she was also interviewed by the Colombian Consulate who agreed that she was a Colombian citizen and approved paperwork for her.

The 15-year-old was then deported to Bogota where she was given full Colombian citizenship, work permit and released. Miss Turner, who reportedly speaks no Spanish, ended up working as a housemaid.

A Facebook profile, was reportedly set up by Jakadrien Turner, for Tika SoloToolonq (Tika Confero). It says she is originally from Bridgetown, Barbados, studied at Texas Southern University and lives in Bogota.

t says she speaks Colombian Spanish along with Creole and Cajun French. In June, her employer was listed as the Convergys Corporation, a management strategy company. She also later worked at a similar company called Teleperformance and had mentioned previously she was employed as a maid.

According to a source at the U.S. department of immigration there have been cases in the past where individuals provide inaccurate information regarding who they are and their immigration status for ulterior motives.

On her Facebook profile, Tika SoloToolonq has posted pictures with a group of women labelled 'Familia... me happy 4 once, in the Mountains'. She appears to be photographed in Colombia.

On October 27, she changed her status from 'single' to 'in a relationship'. She is listed as in a relationship with Alejandro Yoel Almeida Cisneros, originally from Havana, Cuba, who also works at Teleperformance.

On November 15, she posted: 'Well bak in a relationship with same man I broke up with, lol! I love him dearly tho!!!! I think that will never happen, mae that mistake of oing that, beause he show me that he is serious with me, an so on, so ok lol!!!!!' [sic]

Miss Turner or Miss SoloToolonq never mentions deportation but does discuss missing home.

She also has a Twitter account on which she writes will be posted 'Good Mature EXPLICIT TWEETS'.

According to ICE, checks on immigration status of individuals in the agency's custody were not based on race, ethnicity or language abilities - but rather by documentation verifying the immigration status.

Her distraught grandmother Lorene Turner spent more than a year trawling Facebook trying to find her granddaughter and finally tracked her down in the South American country.

'She [Jakadrien Turner] maintained this false identity throughout her local criminal proceedings.'

Immigration spokeswoman

At the time of her arrest, the State Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ran Miss Turner's fingerprints but she was not found in the system.

An ICE official denied that Miss Turner had assumed the name of an existing Colombian citizen with outstanding criminal warrants.

After she found out where her granddaughter was, Mrs Turner contacted the U.S. government who found out where the girl was living. The American Embassy in Colombia asked police to go and collect her.

Colombian officials put the 15-year-old, who is allegedly pregnant according to W-FAA TV, in a detention centre but have made no moves to release her for more than a month. It was unclear when the girl will be able to return to the U.S.

The Department of State confirmed to MailOnline that they were aware of the case and were working with Colombian officials in Bogota but had no further comment at this time.

Questions have been raised as to how a black, American teenager was mistaken for a South American woman.

ICE spokeswoman, Gillian Christensen, said: 'ICE takes these allegations very seriously. At the direction of DHS, ICE is fully and immediately investigating this matter in order to expeditiously determine the facts of this case.

'Preliminary information suggests that after being arrested on state charges for theft by the Houston Police Department, the minor provided a false identity, representing that she was an adult from Colombia with no legal status in the U.S.

'She maintained this false identity throughout her local criminal proceedings in Texas where she was represented by a defense attorney and ultimately convicted by the State criminal court.

At no time during these criminal proceedings was her identity determined to be false.

'Upon her conviction, she was referred to ICE where she continued to maintain a false identity during immigration court proceedings.

'As is standard protocol, criminal database searches and biometric verification were conducted and revealed no information to invalidate her claims. She was ultimately ordered removed from the U.S. by a Department of Justice immigration judge.'

Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), met with President Obama to discuss the matter this morning, a spokesman told MailOnline. The organisation was unable to comment on the outcome of the meeting today.

Jakadrien was reported missing last year and her family initially thought she may have travelled to New Orleans, according to the National Center for Missing Children.

On the U.S. immigration department's website it states that it 'places a high priority on combating illegal immigration, including targeting illegal aliens with criminal records who pose a threat to public safety'.

Chief Charles A McClelland Jr, of the Houston Police Department, released this statement:

'On April 2, 2011, a female suspect was arrested by HPD officers for Class B misdemeanor theft. The female told the arresting officers she was a native of Colombia and that her name was Tika Lanay Cortez, born on March 24, 1990.

'Officers transported her to the HPD Southeast Jail where she was processed. Personnel fingerprinted her and followed procedure by processing her through the secure communities database to determine if she was wanted by immigration and custom enforcement [ICE] personnel.

'It provided no prior arrest history, no wanted status or alternate identification for the prisoner. As is customary, the prisoner was the transported to the Harris County Jail and booked on a theft charge.'

Colombia is the most violent nation in Latin America, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace last year.

It is the world's largest producer of cocaine and around one third of citizens have been affected by armed conflict either through warring drug factions or long-running civil wars.

During the first six months of 2011 it was estimated that 98,000 people had to flee their homes due to the armed conflict in the country.

Colombia has the fourth largest economy in Latin America but there is huge inequality. Some 46 per cent of people live below the poverty line and 17 per cent in 'extreme poverty'.


Impoverished: Almost half of Colombians live below the poverty line while last year it was voted the most dangerous country in Latin America

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1idhYQ81Q

Colombia government says she was working in call center

greenfieldreporter.com
JUAN CARLOS LLORCA Associated Press
First Posted: January 05, 2012 - 5:39 pm
Last Updated: January 05, 2012 - 8:53 pm

EL PASO, Texas — A 15-year-old Texas girl who was deported from the U.S. after she claimed to be an illegal immigrant could be returning soon.

The Colombian government says the U.S. embassy on Thursday submitted the necessary documents for Jakadrien Lorece's (Ja-KAY-dree-un Lo-REES) Turner to come back to the U.S.

The Colombian government also says the girl is in the care of a welfare program. It says Turner had been working in a call center before Dallas Police Department found her and alerted U.S and Colombian officials that she was a U.S. citizen.

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Turner maintained after being arrested in Houston for theft and through the deportation proceedings that she was a Colombian adult in the U.S. illegally.

http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/vi...Deported-Teen/