By: Daniel Nardini
This case of a missing teenager in Texas began back in 2010. For reasons that remain unknown, Jakadrien Lorece Turner ran away from home. Her grandmother Lorene Turner and mother Johnisa Turner had been searching for Jakadrien ever since. Why did she run away? Was the teen troubled emotionally or psychologically? These things have been known to happen to many other teens, so Jakadrien’s case is no exception. We may never fully know why she left home. We also do not know what she was doing for a year. What we do know is that she was eventually picked up by the Dallas police for shoplifting. The case got more bizarre. Jakadrien then gave a false name of a Colombian immigrant named Tika Lanay Cortez all the time that she was incarcerated. This information was given to U.S. immigration who looked up the name. According to U.S. immigration, this person was undocumented and so deportation proceedings were begun. Jakadrien was then expelled from the United States and to Colombia.
Eventually Lorene and Johnisa Turner tracked down Jakadrien with the help of the Dallas police, only to learn that she had been expelled to Colombia. After the Texas state authorities provided the information that Jakadrien is a U.S. citizen, the U.S. State Department brought up the case of Jakadrien with the Colombian government. The U.S. embassy in Colombia’s capital Bogota gave Jakadrien a U.S. passport and all necessary travel documents to return to the United States. This whole episode raises a lot of some very disturbing questions. I have four questions of my own:
1. Why didn’t U.S. immigration check the identity of Jakadrien with a photo of the Colombian suspect? Could not the Colombian government have provided this?
2. Why didn’t U.S. immigration suspect that she might not be the suspect in question since Jakadrien did not speak nor understand Spanish? That should have been a dead give-away. It is a bigger question why the Colombian government did not realize that Jakadrien was not one of their nationals.
3. Why didn’t U.S. immigration check the fingerprints of Jakadrien with that of the suspect? If they had fingerprints of the suspect they could have compared them with Jakadrien’s and found she was not the person they were looking for.
4. Why didn’t U.S. immigration consult with the Colombian Foreign Ministry to obtain all of the pertinent information on who the Colombian suspect was? It would have saved Jakadrien’s family a lot of heartache and the U.S. government a lot of embarrassment.
Oh yes, the U.S. government says that it followed procedure. I have to wonder what procedure that was? Sadly, this is not the first time that the U.S. government has thrown out U.S. citizens. It says everything wrong about an immigration system that is not only broken but does not properly safeguard the rights of U.S. citizens who should not have to worry about being sent to another country without proper lawyer representation and the proper research to make sure they are not getting rid of an American. The only good news in this whole case is that it received the national media attention that it did. This is good since it is making people aware that something is rotten with the state of our immigration system. Fortunately this story has a happy ending. Jakadrien Turner returned from Colombia and has been reunited with her family. We at the Lawndale News wish the Turner family all the best.
The Strange Case of Jakadrien Turner
By: Daniel Nardini
This case of a missing teenager in Texas began back in 2010. For reasons that remain unknown, Jakadrien Lorece Turner ran away from home. Her grandmother Lorene Turner and mother Johnisa Turner had been searching for Jakadrien ever since. Why did she run away? Was the teen troubled emotionally or psychologically? These things have been known to happen to many other teens, so Jakadrien’s case is no exception. We may never fully know why she left home. We also do not know what she was doing for a year. What we do know is that she was eventually picked up by the Dallas police for shoplifting. The case got more bizarre. Jakadrien then gave a false name of a Colombian immigrant named Tika Lanay Cortez all the time that she was incarcerated. This information was given to U.S. immigration who looked up the name. According to U.S. immigration, this person was undocumented and so deportation proceedings were begun. Jakadrien was then expelled from the United States and to Colombia.
Eventually Lorene and Johnisa Turner tracked down Jakadrien with the help of the Dallas police, only to learn that she had been expelled to Colombia. After the Texas state authorities provided the information that Jakadrien is a U.S. citizen, the U.S. State Department brought up the case of Jakadrien with the Colombian government. The U.S. embassy in Colombia’s capital Bogota gave Jakadrien a U.S. passport and all necessary travel documents to return to the United States. This whole episode raises a lot of some very disturbing questions. I have four questions of my own:
1. Why didn’t U.S. immigration check the identity of Jakadrien with a photo of the Colombian suspect? Could not the Colombian government have provided this?
2. Why didn’t U.S. immigration suspect that she might not be the suspect in question since Jakadrien did not speak nor understand Spanish? That should have been a dead give-away. It is a bigger question why the Colombian government did not realize that Jakadrien was not one of their nationals.
3. Why didn’t U.S. immigration check the fingerprints of Jakadrien with that of the suspect? If they had fingerprints of the suspect they could have compared them with Jakadrien’s and found she was not the person they were looking for.
4. Why didn’t U.S. immigration consult with the Colombian Foreign Ministry to obtain all of the pertinent information on who the Colombian suspect was? It would have saved Jakadrien’s family a lot of heartache and the U.S. government a lot of embarrassment.
Oh yes, the U.S. government says that it followed procedure. I have to wonder what procedure that was? Sadly, this is not the first time that the U.S. government has thrown out U.S. citizens. It says everything wrong about an immigration system that is not only broken but does not properly safeguard the rights of U.S. citizens who should not have to worry about being sent to another country without proper lawyer representation and the proper research to make sure they are not getting rid of an American. The only good news in this whole case is that it received the national media attention that it did. This is good since it is making people aware that something is rotten with the state of our immigration system. Fortunately this story has a happy ending. Jakadrien Turner returned from Colombia and has been reunited with her family. We at the Lawndale News wish the Turner family all the best.