For more than 15 months, Lorene Turner had been looking for her missing granddaughter Jakadrien Turner. She would even look on Facebook, hoping to find any sign of her.
“It's very frustrating," Lorene Turner told WFAA. "Once I get home, I am up until 3 or 4 in the morning searching and looking. It's all I can think about: finding my baby."
The 15-year-old girl went missing in the fall of 2010; she had been distraught after her parents' divorce and the death of her grandfather. But in April 2011, Turner found out, with the help of Dallas police, that the girl had been deported to, of all places, Colombia.
"They didn't do their work," Turner said. "How do you deport a teenager and send her to Colombia without a passport, without anything?"
Jakadrien was reportedly in Houston when she went missing and was arrested by cops for theft. She then gave officers a fake name. Unfortunately for her, that name belonged to an illegal immigrant from Colombia whom the cops were looking for. Jakadrien was then deported to Colombia, where she received a work card and went through some hard labor.
"She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was," Turner said.
But if you thought this story ended with Jakadrien coming back home, you are wrong. The Colombian government is still holding the young girl and refuses to release her.
"I feel like she will come home," the grandmother said with tears in her eyes. "I just need help and prayer."
When a young girl who doesn't speak a lick of Spanish gets transferred from Houston to Colombia without anybody checking her records, it shows how flawed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is. We are praying for the safe return of this young girl to her family, and hope they take the government to court for a mistake that has cost them so much time together.
Read more at WFAA.