Maybe she already knew her Colombian boy friend and that was the best way to get to him. Interesting the way this is playing out.
There’s got to be more to this story. A young girl leaves home, gets deported and seems very happy? She never uses her real name again on social networking. Never emails family.
What situation at home caused this? Was there some kind of abuse? I wouldn’t be surprised to see her take off again after authorities return her home.
The article says that she claims she was “born in Colombia, raised in Barbados, grew up in New Orleans and then lived in Dallas and Houston.” While “raised in” and “grew up in” are a bit contradictory, if her story is that she grew up in NoLA, it makes sense would have an American accent.
That said, the kid clearly knew what she was doing. I’m not sure why we’d take anything she said on her Facebook with any veracity (like the Barbados thing)— she quite clearly made up her entire background to make her story sound more legitimate.
I think this might be the answer. Maybe boyfriend had a 21 year old friend who he knew had illegally gone to another country and made a deal with her— we’ll use your name, but then the countries wont be looking for you anymore.
Well, and at this point, she’s basically lived as a self supporting adult (in a foreign country to boot) for an entire year. I can’t imagine going from that back to the lockdown and lack of autonomy that comes with being a teenager.
The family, in the CNN article, raises the issue of her being coerced by another party to assume this identity. And while I’m a little reluctant to take that leap, I wonder where the real Tika Cortes is.
Cause I would totally take her word for it … 
Probably illegally in one country or another, using a different identity. This whole situation, if it had continued to work, would have been ideal for her-- she may be living and working in the US and no one would be looking for her.
It’s not like Tika Lanay Cortez is going to be a common enough name for this to be a coincidence. She must have known Cortez or been given that name to use. She would have used something like Maria Elena Ramirez if she was totally pulling a name from the air.
I’m still at a loss at how someone who doesn’t speak Spanish can convince people they are Colombian. There’s something missing in this story.
That’s kind of what I’m thinking. The question is, who gave her that name, and why?
The boyfriend who wanted to sex his underage girlfriend would be my best bet. I wouldn’t be shocked if it turned out they met on the internet.
I just looked at the girl’s damn face on several pictures, and I’d have had no trouble believing she’s 22 if she had told me so.
I too bet on the whole thing having been prepared with her online colombian virtual boyfriend.
And as someone pointed out, being able to pull out this shit (passing as someone else, lying in believable ways to police officers, lawyers, judges, immigration officials, going through trial, jail and deportation, and eventually living and working for one year in a foreign country she didn’t know the language of) requires a level of self control and maturity well above the typical 14 yo (or even the typical 22 yo or 45 yo, for that matter).
And I can’t see a way she could have been coerced in doing all that, by the way.
Knowing she’s 14/15, I can definitely see that in her face. But if I saw that girl and someone told me she was 22, there’s no reason I wouldn’t believe that either. I know plenty of 22 year olds who look like her.
There is a population of native-Anglophone Colombians.
And the quote about how fingerprints, etc. “gave no reason to refute” the original ID, would suggest that the authorities in the US did NOT have very much identifying data on Tika Lanay on hand beyond just a name.
Odd all around.
I’m not imagining the US folks will put you through the ringer to prove you are who you say you are, when you’re claiming to be an illegal alien who is subject to deportation. I’m a bit surprised the Colombians didn’t pick up on it, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that the US folks didn’t care.
What I do find surprisingly sad is her Facebook page. She has a photo set from a few months ago titled “me happy 4 once”, with her friends up in the mountains. Now, she’s in jail, presumably for fraud or identity theft, or some such thing, because the family she ran away from tracked her down.
Well, it says her defense lawyer was convinced she was from Colombia.
Their English is a lot different than ours. Different enough to be a virtual separate language.
Maybe the online Colombian boyfriend snagged a black-market Colombian ID for her, and the closest match he could get was one saying Tika Lanay Cortez, 22. It’s also possible that she lied to the online boyfriend and told him that she was over 21.
The thing is that being sent to Columbia isn’t like being sent to prison. There’s no real due process standard involved. Let’s say for example that when she was arrested in Houston, she had claimed the identity of somebody who was from Boston and the police sent her home to there. Would people be outraged that the police hadn’t taken the time to prove that she was really from Massachusetts?
Easy. Tons of people come to the U.S. as children and have little to no knowledge of the language spoken in the country where they are born.
I find it amusing how the articles on this and mentions in the news mention she is black, as if thats another strike against ICE. First of all from her pictures her racial background is ambiguous at best, she is obviously of mixed race. And even then its not like there are no black Columbians or people of mixed race is Columbia, come on.
Its funny because ICE has been rightly criticized for using race as a criteria when doing their round ups, and assuming anyone who looks latino is suspect. But now they are supposed to be experts at identifying racial background and should be grilling anyone who doesn’t fit fictional stereotypes of what Columbian nationals look like.:smack:
I would say that by appearances she looks similar to at least half of the women who live in northern Colombia (where I have lived), which is part of the Caribbean–however the term used in those articles is “African-American,” rather than “black,” which implies more than racial appearance.