HOUSTON -- A 14-year-old Dallas runaway was deported to Colombia by mistake a year ago after she was arrested in Houston for theft and gave authorities a false name, WFAA TV reports.
She was finally located by her determined grandmother, Lorene Turner, who kept following clues and messages on her Facebook page until she tracked down Jakadrien Turner in South America, WFAA says.
"God just kept leading me," Turner tells WFAA's Rebecca Lopez. "I wake up in the middle of the night and do whatever God told me to do, and I found her."
In an exclusive report, the Dallas TV station says not even the teenager's defense attorney knew her real name when she was deported in April 2011. The fake name she had given authorities was for a 22-year-old undocumented immigrant who was wanted in Colombia.
The Colombian government still won't release Jakadrien, who speaks no Spanish, although there are efforts underway to get her back to the states, WFAA reports.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Jakadrien is pregnant and living in Bogota. The newspaper also offers extensive excerpts from her Facebook page in which she describes being homesick and the ups and downs of living outside the United States.
"It was definitely a hard time," says her mother, Johnessa Turner, who has not seen Jakadrien for more than a year. "This has been going on for so long. ... It's still hard."
WFAA says the U.S. Immigration Service denies any wrongdoing, arguing that attempts to verify her identity through fingerprints and database searches did not raise any red flags.
Jakadrien's name and photo had been posted on the website of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
WFAA says NAACP and other civil rights leader will brief President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus on the case today.
USA Today