A 3-year-old girl is back in Chicago after a run-in with immigration authorities and months apart from her parents. We report from our West Side bureau.
The girl is a U.S. citizen who visited Mexico last fall. She flew back with her grandmother to O’Hare Airport. The woman had a U.S. visa.
But Customs and Border Protection held her and the girl until the parents appeared. Then the officers put the parents in deportation proceedings.
Chris Bergin, the family’s attorney, calls that kind of enforcement a new tactic of entrapment and racial profiling.
BERGIN: This is just another slide down the slippery slope of losing constitutional protections.
STURGEON: They can call it what they want to call it.
That’s agency spokesperson Brett Sturgeon.
STURGEON: Customs and Border Protection is doing their job.
The parents expected to be deported and sent the 3-year-old back to Mexico ahead of them. But a judge has postponed the case until late next year. So the girl came home yesterday.