A Dallas teenager, missing since 2010, has now been found pregnant and jailed in a foreign country.
According to published reports, American teenager Jakadrien Turner was 13 when she ran away from home after her grandfather died and her parents divorced in 2010.
Jakadrien turned up a year later, in Houston, Texas, where she was arrested for shoplifting at age 14. Jakadrien had no ID on her when she gave police a false name, which coincidentally belonged to an illegal immigrant who was flagged by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for deportation.
According to WFAA:
ICE officials stepped in… took the girl’s fingerprints, but somehow didn’t confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.
Jakadrien found work cleaning homes as a maid in a Spanish-speaking country where she did not understand the language. After months of searching, Jakadrien’s grandmother found the girl working in Bogota, Columbia. She is 15 now, and pregnant.
The grandmother alerted U.S. officials, who notified officials at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. But that was a month ago, according to the Dallas Morning News. “the Colombian government now has her in a locked detention facility and won’t release her, despite her family’s request.”
What should have been a simple case of mistaken identity has now turned into an international incident with Diplomatic implications for the Obama administration.
In a statement regarding Jakadrien’s case, ICE writes:
ICE takes these allegations very seriously. 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.
Jakadrien’s grandmother remains hopeful that her granddaughter will be returned home soon. “I feel like she will come home. I just need help. And I need prayer.”
This story makes you wonder why the totally worthless video slore Kat Stacks sits in a U.S. prison tweeting while awaiting deportation, but this little girl is immediately shipped off to Colombia.
