The Irish Times
January 7, 2012
A pregnant 15-year-old Texas girl mistakenly deported to Colombia in a bizarre mix-up has returned to the United States to be reunited with her family.
Jakadrien Turner from Dallas was deported in May to a country she had never seen, and whose language she did not speak, after she gave a false name and age when she was arrested for shoplifting in Houston.
Colombia’s Foreign Ministry said US officials had provided identity documents proving that Turner is a US citizen, opening the way for her to be handed over to US Consular officials and flown home.
Before the youngster’s return, her grandmother, Lorene Turner, said she wanted answers. “I don’t understand how this could happen. Someone made a goof, they goofed up,” she said.
She also said her granddaughter was now pregnant.
The girl was a 14-year-old runaway from the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff when she was arrested in April for misdemeanor theft, according to the Houston Police Department.
“The female told the arresting officers she was a native of Colombia and that her name was Tika Lanay Cortez, born March 24th, 1990,” Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland, Jr. said .
Mr McClelland said jail personnel followed procedure by fingerprinting a detainee they believed was an adult foreign national and running a check against federal immigration databases under the Secure Communities program set up to deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes.
“The Secure Communities database provided no prior arrest history, no wanted status, or alternative identification for the prisoner,” he said.
At that point, police assumed she was a 21-year-old criminal from Colombia, and deportation proceedings began. Two months later, the girl from Texas who does not speak Spanish found herself in South America, where she was issued a Colombian passport based on the information provided by US officials.
Read more: Texan teen home after deportation ‘goof’
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