SAN DIEGO (CN) — “You are not you because of your Mexican heritage and ancestry,” is what Customs and Border Patrol officers implied to two children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border when then were accused of lying about the identity of one the siblings, attorneys for the children and their family said on the last day of trial on Friday.
Oscar Amparo Medina and his sister Julia Isabel Amparo were 14 and nine, respectively, in March 2019 when they were stopped at the Tijuana-San Ysidro, California, border crossing while heading to school in San Ysidro.
The siblings, both U.S. citizens, claim that the federal government falsely imprisoned them over accusations of human trafficking and coerced them into making false statements about Julia’s identity.
On Friday, Joseph McMullen, the family’s attorney, closed the San Diego federal bench trial that began Tuesday, saying, “You are a lesser American. That is what the conduct tells the children.”
“We’ve seen the repeated ignoring of the rules, the rules of engagement for Customs and Border Patrol officers dealing with a minor traveler at the border,” he added.
The first rule that was broken, the family claims, is that a nine-year-old girl was interviewed in a room alone by border patrol officer Willmy Lara, who is not named as a defendant in the case, where she was coerced into falsely confessing to being her own cousin.
“How many times does he say to her in that room that ‘you’re not you?’” McMullen asked Friday.
Mimicking the nine year old’s initial refusals to lie about her identity by shaking her head, McMullen wondered when did her head might have started to tilt upwards after being repeatedly berated by Lara.
The sibling’s normally routine procedure of crossing the border turned harrowing after a border patrol officer claimed the girl depicted in Julia’s passport photo was different than the child in front of them. According to the government, the picture showed a “mole” on the child’s face that was not visible on the face of the child that showed up at the border crossing. The family instead characterizes the mark as a “dot.”
The family says that the children were first questioned together, and then separately when Julia was accused of actually being their cousin.
The children were then driven to another facility and placed in different holding cells, the family says, where Oscar was told he would be arrested and charged with human and organ trafficking, and his dreams of joining the U.S. Navy might be hindered, if he didn’t admit that Julia was his cousin.
According to the family, after hours of interrogations and intimidation and promises he would be released if he signed a confession, Oscar finally agreed to the false statement, only after which he was released from custody.
Officers then showed Julia his false statement, leading to her own false confession to being her cousin. However, unlike her brother, she was kept in custody for another 24 hours.
The family filed a lawsuit against the federal government and the officers for false imprisonment in 2022. They also say in their lawsuit that the federal government violated the children’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
On Friday, the family asked U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a Barack Obama appointee, to rule in their favor and award $1.8 to $3.3 million in damages to Julia, $800,000 to $1.4 million to Oscar, and a similar amount to their mother, Thelma Medina Navarro.
During her closing argument, Stephanie Sotomayor, attorney for the government, said that repeated lies told by the family were the basis of the government’s position, and why the children were detained in the first place.
“The crux of this case is credibility. The crux of this case is whether the children lied in secondary inspection,” Sotomayor said, referring to the stage in border patrol’s investigation where the family claims the children were coerced.
The missing mole, or perhaps dot, that was on the Julia’s passport ID, but not on her face, presented the first red flag for officers to start investigating, Sotomayor said, but the children’s contradicting and confusing answers to basic questions leading up to their false claim about the Julia’s identity ultimately led them to the underground detention facility.
The ultimate objective of the border patrol officers, Sotomayor argued, was the safety and security of the two unaccompanied minor children, since officers believed initially that Oscar might have been involved in human trafficking.
Julia, now 14, testified in court on Thursday. Basic information, like where she lives, that she stated in court, contradicted answers she gave in her deposition, Sotomayor argued.
“If she behaved that way in court, Your Honor, at 14 years old,” Sotomayor said, “Imagine how she behaved when officers asked her basic questions.”
The letters that the family claims were coerced confessions about Julia’s identity, were just statements about how the children got to the border crossing, Sotomayor added.
Sotomayor said that Lara is a credible witness who testified that there were other officers in the room while he interviewed Julia.
Oscar simply lied to officers, and convinced Julia to go along with it, in a scheme to try to get through the bureaucracy of the border faster so he could get to school, which he later admitted was a mistake, she argued.
Curiel said he hopes to issue a decision in the case in the next two to three weeks.
