Oregon mom and four kids held for weeks after being 'wrongfully detained' while visiting Canadian border
Jackie Merlos, and her four children, 9-year-old triplets and a 7-year-old son, were detained on June 28 at Peace Arch Park.
Merlos, originally from Honduras, was there to meet her sister who lives in Canada because the Peace Arch is considered neutral ground. The arch straddles the 49th parallel and visitors don't have to go through the official border crossing process.
Also with Merlos at this time was her elderly mother, Juana. All six family members were detained by Customs and Border Protection and sent to an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington.
Then, several days after Merlos and her children were taken into custody, Merlos' husband was detained outside the couple's home in Portland and taken to the facility in Tacoma.
CBP said they detained Merlos because she was involved in a human trafficking operation, though she has not been charged with any crimes yet, according to an attorney representing the family.
'The individual was arrested by Border Patrol agents in Peace Arch Park attempting to smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S. on June 28,' CBP spokesperson Jason A. Givens said in a statement.
'She had her children present during the smuggling attempt and she requested the children remain with her during detention.'
Mimi Lettunich, Merlos' close friend and guardian to Merlos' children, started a GoFundMe to support the family's legal expenses and share updates about their whereabouts.
When Lettunich first started the fundraiser, which has raised more than $21,000, she had no idea where Merlos and her kids were being held.
Lettunich also speculated that the human trafficking charge CBP has levied at Merlos came from the fact that her sister briefly stepped over the boundary to say goodbye to her and her children.
Lettunich said Merlos and her family are 'the kind of people you want in society. They're the people that you're lucky enough to have as friends.'
'I think it's incredibly disappointing that we aren't treating them the way they're treating everybody around them here... It's not right,' she said.
According to Oregon Congresswoman Maxine Dexter, who has stepped in to advocate on behalf of the family, said they are together at a Customs and Border Protection detention center in Ferndale.
In a video posted to social media, Dexter said Merlos and her kids have spent the past two weeks in a 'cement, windowless cell.'
'This is what authoritarianism looks like. Citizen children abducted. Community members disappeared. If we allow this to become normal, we surrender who we are. We cannot look away. We cannot back down,' said Dexter, a Democrat.
CBP's most recently published guidelines state that people should not be held in their detention centers for more than 72 hours.
'Every effort must be made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing, transfer, release, or repatriation as appropriate and as operationally feasible,' the guidelines state.
Dexter claims Merlos has been denied access to an attorney and even to her US representatives.
Washington Congressman Rick Larsen told KGW8 that he is working with Dexter and the local Homeland Security office to gather more fathers on the family's detention.
'I respect federal law enforcement, and they must respect the constitutional rights of the people they detain,' Larsen said in a statement.
An attorney for the family confirmed that Merlos isn't a US citizen but has applied for a special kind of visa. Those documents are still pending.
Len Saunders, an immigration attorney in Washington state that isn't working on Merlos' case, told KGW8 that he had serious doubts about CBP's rationale for detaining her.
'It doesn't add up that a mom would bring her four American kids if she's trying to help smuggle aliens into this country, so I'd be interested to know what the final details are and if Homeland Security is being honest here and upfront,' he said.
'I've no idea what the reason is for keeping them so long in one of these local facilities because they're not meant for more than a few hours or a few days. So, this is kind of the million-dollar question that I'll be interested to know.'
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