OREGON, USA — An Oregon family, including four children who are U.S. citizens, have been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for several weeks, according to Congresswoman Maxine Dexter.
Dexter, who represents Oregon's 3rd Congressional District, said Friday that it took days to locate the family at in a Ferndale facility after CBP misled her team about their location.
The family — a mom, Jackie Merlos, and her four children, 9-year-old triplets and a 7-year-old son — were detained June 28 at the U.S.-Canadian border at Peace Arch Park. Merlos was meeting her sister, a Canadian citizen, in that well-known neutral area where Americans can see their family and friends.
"Her sister ... stepped over the line and she was saying goodbye" when Merlos was detained by CBP, according to Mimi Lettunich, Merlos' close friend and guardian to Merlos' children.
Lettunich said days later, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Merlos' husband in Portland, taking him to a facility in Tacoma.
"They're the kind of people you want in society. They're the people that you're lucky enough to have as friends," Lettunich told KGW, "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."
Dexter echoed Lettunich, saying in a statement, "Trump said he would go after 'the worst of the worst.' Instead, his immigration machine is abducting Oregonians without cause — including four U.S. citizen children in my district," calling it "wholly unprecedented" for the agency to detain anyone "for weeks without cause."
CBP short-term detention standards say people "should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP hold rooms or holding facilities. 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.”
Dexter lambasted the family's detainment after vising the CBP facility for the second time, calling it an "inhumane situation."
"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," she said.
Washington Congressman Rick Larsen said his team is working with Dexter and the local Department of Homeland Security to uncover more facts on the family's detention, stating, "I respect federal law enforcement, and they must respect the constitutional rights of the people they detain."
CBP spokesperson Jason A. Givens faulted the mother for the family's detention, claiming that the kids were being held with her at the woman's request.
“The individual was arrested by Border Patrol agents in Peace Arch Park attempting to smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S. on June 28," Givens said in a statement. "She had her children present during the smuggling attempt and she requested the children remain with her during detention.”
Len Saunders, an immigration attorney in Blaine, Wash., though, had reservations about CBP's version of events.
"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," Saunders 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."
An attorney for the family told reporters that while Merlos isn't a U.S. citizen, she's applied for a special kind of visa, and those documents are pending. The attorney also said she's not been charged with any crime.
Lettunich organized a fundraiser for the family. As of Friday night, friends have raised nearly $20,000 to help cover immigration attorney's fees, bond payments, advocacy and other needs.