Teen, mistakenly deported, back in U.S.

DALLAS -- A 15-year-old Texas girl who was deported to Colombia after claiming to be an illegal immigrant was back in the United States on Friday and at the center of an international mystery over how a minor could be sent to a country where she is not a citizen.

Her family has questioned why U.S. officials didn't do more to verify her identity and say she is not fluent in Spanish and had no ties to Colombia. While many facts of the case involving Jakadrien Lorece Turner remain unclear, U.S. and Colombian officials have pointed fingers over who is responsible.

Turner arrived in Dallas on Friday evening and was reunited with her family. She was surrounded by her mother, grandmother and law enforcement when she emerged from the international gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport shortly before 10 p.m.

"She's happy to be home," the family's attorney, Ray Jackson, said. He said the family was "ecstatic" to have Turner back in Texas and they plan to "do what we can to make sure she gets back to a normal life."

Turner's saga began when she ran away more than a year ago. Her family said she left home in November 2010. Houston police said she was arrested on April 2, 2011, for misdemeanor theft in that city and claimed to be Tika Lanay Cortez, a Colombian woman born in 1990. It's unclear whether she has been living under that name.

Houston police said in a statement that her name was run through a database to determine whether she was wanted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement but the results were negative. She was then jailed 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.

Immigration officials insist they found nothing to indicate that the girl wasn't a Colombian woman living illegally in the country. An ICE official said the teen claimed to be Cortez throughout the criminal proceedings and the ensuing deportation process, in which an immigration judge ultimately ordered her back to Colombia.