nenena | Fucking I.C.E.

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Fucking I.C.E.

Dallas teen missing since 2010 was mistakenly deported.

From the article:

There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national. Immigration officials are investigating and released a statement late Tuesday.

They shipped her off to Colombia. She was forced to work as a servant in somebody's house and later held in a Colombian detention facility while the US government flailed around uselessly.

Since the publication of the linked article, the girl HAS been re-united with her family, so this story at least has a happy ending.

But Jesus F. Christ, ICE. Makes you wonder how many other times this might have happened before.

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What I don't understand is how they could mistake a 15 year old girl for a 22 year old. I mean, if you're in a job where you deal with this sort of thing on a day-to-day basis, you should develop a pretty good sense of how old people are.

There is more about the legal proceedings on Huffington Post.

She was 14 at the time, even!

Thank you for the link. I didn't know about the whole "group deportation interview" thing, urgh.

From the tone of the first linked article it seems like Jakadrien didn't do anything but mislead the people who arrested and deported her (and makes it sound like she wanted to get away from her home as far as possible), but still, how could you not check up on someone's story?! I get that there are tons of man-hours involved and probably very little staff to follow through, but this is a mistake nobody's going to be forgetting for a while.

Agreed. I'm sure that ICE is severely underfunded and understaffed, as is every government agency, but they still have rules and procedures that they need to follow. Especially when people's lives are at stake. In this case it sounds like they didn't follow the proper procedures.

Oh my fucking god. I have no words.

There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national.

YOU DON'T SAY. I don't think there's a word to describe that level of incompetence.

I'm also kind of amazed that a) the girl actively tried to get herself deported by pretending to be a specific illegal immigrant — I mean I know she was upset and only 14 and a runaway, but still, and b) Facebook of all things was what saved her. At the end of it all, I just feel sorry for her mom. Imagine going through all that grief and stress only to find out that it was the US government who took your daughter away.

Wait, WAS she pretending to be a specific person? From the articles I read she was either a) using a fake ID or b) just made up a Hispanic-sounding name. I don't think she ever had any idea that the name she was using belonged to an illegal immigrant with an arrest warrant. And she certainly wouldn't be the first 14-year-old to use a fake name/ID without having any idea that she was using the name of a real person.

Unless I missed something.

The article you linked said that "She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Colombia, who had warrants for her arrest." I figured that the odds of her making up Hispanic-sounding name and having it turn out to be the name of an actual illegal immigrant were pretty slim, but then the odds of her knowing the name of an actual illegal immigrant are also pretty slim, so idk.

I don't think it's that unlikely. She may have purchased the ID card to a) avoid being found and sent home, and b) to get into bars as a 21-year-old. And Tika Cortez had obvious reasons for wanting to get rid of her ID, seeing as she was living here illegally and wanted on a warrant. Though again, I have a hard time believing that would work for a 14-year-old. Or that any sane person would seriously consider deporting a minor who speaks little or no Spanish to another country without establishing a solid family connection there.

Correction: None of the articles say she had a fake ID, but I just figured that was where she got the name from.

Yeah, that's what I assumed too.

Just agreeing with what vihm said, it's actually not unlikely at all. She probably purchased a fake ID somewhere and got the name that way.

Kids as young as 12 and 13 have been caught with fake IDs at the school where I teach. A lot of them don't seem to realize that those "fake" IDs are actually real IDs that the previous owners either sold or had stolen from them.

ugh ugh ugh :( that's frightening and awful :(

It's nowhere near as bad, but I was accused of being an illegal immigrant when I tried to go to Rochester once at the border, despite my Canadian citizenship or anything else... and so even if nothing bad happened to me, there definitely are immigration and border officials who assume, judge and stereotype based on their own ignorance and racism, and if they're assholes, or over-zealous types, it could be really bad :(

I worry like you that this isn't an isolated incident :\

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