An Arizona tribal member got mixed up in a close-call mistake made by local authorities at an Iowa jail after nearly being turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Right after her Wednesday release from lockup in Des Moines, Iowa, 24-year-old Leticia Jacobo wondered: “Where would I, you know, get deported to?”
“Kinda silly,” Jacobo told KJZZ. “But yeah, I definitely had that thought, like, where [are] you guys going to take me if that was to happen.”
That’s because Jacobo, who is Arizona-born and a member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, believes she’d been almost deported by accident. Her mother, Ericka Burns, tried to visit, “but the facility denied it” because she was listed as an immigration detainee.
“I was on hold, and they’re quite rude,” added Jacobo. “No one told me, nothing. No one came and talked to me. No one explained what was going on. I was getting all the information from my mother.”
Jacobo was arrested in September for violating probation and allegedly driving with a suspended license. Her scheduled release was set for Tuesday, Nov. 11, but she did not leave until early the next day after family brought her birth certificate.
Jail officials say her records had been mixed up with those of another inmate, Mexican national Reina Jacobo, who was supposed to be handed over to ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in Des Moines.
“They came across the error, they took it off and [Leticia] was released without spending any extra time in jail. It was just a clerical error,” said Polk County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Mark Chance. “Unfortunately, someone with the same last name as that person was also in the jail at the same time an ICE detainer came in.”
Reina Jacobo, also known as Reina Ramirez Gamez, had a warrant out of Nebraska but was booked into Polk County Jail and facing charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and a controlled substance.
“[Leticia] literally got out when she was supposed to,” added Chance, mentioning jail command staff notified supervisors to “be more vigilant when they’re doing that stuff and not making mistakes like that.”
As for ICE itself, Tanya Román, the federal agency’s acting communications director, told KJZZ Leticia Jacobo wasn’t ever technically in their custody.
“She was not detained. Absolutely not, we do not deport U.S. citizens, regardless of their racial, ethnic background,” said Román, stressing that statement applies to tribal members. “We do accept tribal IDs and they are federal IDs.”
Jacobo fears otherwise, suggesting “this simple, you know, mistake is happening way too much and they don’t take it seriously.”
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