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

I could be wrong but I think she'd rather stay there. The first interview with her when she gets back will be interesting.

deseretnews.com
By Linda Stewart Ball,
Associated Press
Published: Friday, Jan. 6, 2012 6:00 p.m. MST

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

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

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 U.S. immigration authorities had the responsibility to determine if a person is a citizen.

"Often in these situations they have these group hearings where they tell everybody you're going to be deported," said Jacqueline Stevens, a political science professor at Northwestern University, who is an expert on immigration issues. "Everything is really quick, even if you understand English you wouldn't understand what is going on. If she were in that situation as a 14-year-old she would be herded through like cattle and not have a chance to talk to the judge about her situation."

Jakadrien was on a flight from Atlanta and would be in Dallas by evening, her mother, Johnisa Turner, told the Associated Press. She had said earlier that she planned to meet her daughter when she arrives in the city.

"Our day has been hectic, hers is, too," Turner said. "Just as long as she makes it home, just as long as she gets here."

Turner said she has "a gazillion questions" for Jakadrien. Federal and local officials may have plenty, as well.

The saga began when the teen ran away more than a year ago. Jakadrien's family said she left home in November 2010. 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.

U.S. 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, speaking on condition of anonymity due to not being authorized to discuss additional details of the case, 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 the U.S. National Security Agency and with information submitted by U.S. officials, 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 U.S. 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."

"She looks like a kid, she acts like a kid. How could they think she wasn't a kid?" Lorene Turner asked on Thursday.

Lorene Turner, a Dallas hairstylist, said she spent a lot of time on the Internet trying to track down Jakadrien.

Ultimately, the girl was found in Bogota by the Dallas Police Department with help from Colombian and U.S. officials.

Dallas Police detective C'mon (pronounced Simone) Wingo, the detective in charge of the case, said she was contacted in August by the girl's grandmother, who said Jakadrien had posted "kind of disturbing" messages on a Facebook account where she goes by yet another name.

Wingo said the girl was located in early November through her use of a computer to log into Facebook. Relatives were then put into contact with the U.S. embassy in Bogota to provide pictures and documents to prove Jakadrien's identity.

Colombian officials said when the government discovered she was a U.S. citizen and a minor, it put her under the care of a welfare program.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the case was brought to the State Department's attention in mid-December.

"We didn't have any involvement at all in this case until it came to light that there may be a problem with an American minor in Colombia, and that — and then we became involved both with Colombian authorities and with folks in Dallas," Nuland said.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, who teaches immigration law at Cornell Law School, said hundreds of U.S. citizens are wrongfully detained or deported each year.

"There are a variety of legitimate reasons why somebody might not appear to be a U.S. citizen at first glance." he said. "It's the duty of the U.S. federal immigration agency to make sure that we do not detain and deport U.S. citizens erroneously. And this, unfortunately happened in this case."

Llorca reported from El Paso, Texas. Associated Press reporters Cesar Garcia in Bogota, Colombia, and Sandy Kozel and Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7...n-US.html?pg=3

Jakadrien Turner Was Deported After Claiming She Was From Colombia

wcyb.com
By Ed LavanderaCNN Correspondent
UPDATED: 7:09 am EST January 7, 2012

(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.

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.wcyb.com/news/30155844/detail.html

telegram.com
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 7, 2012

DALLAS — An attorney for the family of a Texas teenager who was deported to Colombia after claiming to be an illegal immigrant says her relatives are "ecstatic" she's back in the U.S.

Jakadrien Lorece (Ja-KAY-dree-un Lo-REES) Turner returned 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.

Attorney Ray Jackson said the family would not be issuing any statements Friday night.

However, he said the girl is "happy to be home" and the family plans to "do what we can to make sure she gets back to a normal life."

http://www.telegram.com/article/20120107/APA/301079959