Amerikaanse tiener verdwijnt naar Colombia

Jakadrien Turner, age 15, center, walks with her grandmother Lorene Turner, left, and mother Johnisa Turner, right, all of Dallas, at DFW Airport in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday Jan. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Mike Fuentes)

Afgelopen vrijdag keerde de vijftienjarige Jakadrien Turner aka Tika Lanay Cortez terug in Texas, nadat ze negen maanden geleden door de Amerikaanse vreemdelingendienst was uitgezet naar Colombia. Haar trieste verhaal past in de verdwenen en verschenen-serie.
Turner liep in november 2010 weg van huis en werd in april 2011 in Houton gearresteerd wegens winkeldiefstal. Bij haar aanhouding zei ze dat ze een in 1990 geboren Colombiaanse was en Tika Lanay Cortez heette. The Washington Post bericht:

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.

Blijkbaar hebben de Amerikaanse autoriteiten contact opgenomen met de Colombiaanse en is het meisje ook ondervraagd door iemand van het Colombiaanse consulaat. Daarop kreeg Turner een tijdelijk paspoort met de gegevens die ze de Amerikaanse autoriteiten had doorgegeven.

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.

Uiteindelijk werd het meisje in november 2011 in Bogotá gevonden:

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.

Hierop volgde natuurlijk nog wat bureaucratisch gesteggel, want een fout is zo gemaakt, maar als die gecorrigeerd moet worden, moet alles natuurlijk dubbel gecontroleerd worden.
Eind vorige week kwam Turner dus eindelijk thuis: vijftien jaar oud en vijf maanden zwanger...


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