US teen deported to Colombia after giving false name

COLOMBIAN authorities said they were due to hand over a pregnant 15-year-old Texas girl to US officials last night to be reunited with her family, nine months after she was deported to South America in a bizarre mix-up.

Dallas runaway Jakadrien Turner was deported last May to the Andean 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 was a US citizen. It said in a statement she would be handed over to US consular officials to be “returned to her country of origin”.

While the youngster may finally be on her way home, her grandmother, Lorene Turner, wants answers.

“I don’t understand how this could happen. Someone made a goof; they goofed up,” she said.

The girl was a 14-year-old runaway from the Dallas neighbourhood of Oak Cliff when she was arrested for “misdemeanor theft” in April, said 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 24, 1990,” Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland Jr said yesterday.

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 programme 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. The Texas girl, who does not speak Spanish, found herself in South America two months later, where she was issued with a Colombian passport based on the information provided by US officials.

Lorene Turner said the family, working with police and Texas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, located the girl in Colombia late last year, mainly by finding a Facebook page she created there.