Family awarded $1.5m after customs agents kept US citizens, aged nine and 14, imprisoned
A family has been awarded $1.5 million after their two children, who are US citizens, were falsely imprisoned at the US-Mexico border.
US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel awarded $250,000 to the children’s mother, $175,000 to the boy and $1.1m to the girl in his ruling in the civil lawsuit on Friday.
Julia, who was nine years old at the time, and her brother Oscar, 14, were arrested on March 18, 2019, as they made their regular crossing into the US from their home in Tijuana, Mexico to attend school.
Both children, whose last names were withheld in court documents, were born in the US and are US citizens. Their mother, Thelma Medina Navarro, is a Mexican citizen with a temporary US border-crossing card, according to court documents.
As they attempted to cross the border at the San Ysidro point of entry, near San Diego, with a pair of family friends, US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents stopped Julia, believing she didn’t match the photo on her passport.
From there, she was taken into a room and interrogated by a single Customs and Border Patrol officer, breaking policy requiring an additional witness for the interview of a minor, according to the court.
In the interrogation room, Julia was coerced into giving a false confession that she was her cousin, prompting officials to believe she and Oscar were potentially involved in smuggling and using false identities.
“The United States does not offer a coherent explanation as to why Julia would falsely confess that she was her cousin,” Judge Curiel wrote on Friday, during the ruling. “Since the confession was not recorded, witnessed or even recounted in any written detail, it will never be known why a 9-year-old U.S. citizen falsely confessed to being someone she is not.”
After subsequent rounds of interviews, the children were then separated and detained in cells at the border crossing’s Admissibility Enforcement Unit, where Oscar was held for 14 hours and Julia was detained for 34 hours.
The children were finally released by the Border Patrol after pressure from the Mexican consulate and the children’s mother, Thelma Medina Navarro, had given media interviews about what had happened.
The incident left Julia with insomnia and nightmares, and she needed counseling after being released, according to court documents.
“I hope that no one ever has this again,” Julia told NBC San Diego following the ruling on Friday.
