A US Citizen Said She Was Illegally Held by ICE. Surveillance Video, the DHS and a Million-Dollar Lawsuit Say Otherwise

In a city that has been targeted for aggressive immigration enforcement, it was a compelling story.

A US citizen of Pakistani descent, Sundas Naqvi, said she was returning to the US from an overseas work trip when she and five coworkers were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Her story got the attention of a family friend, Cook County commissioner Kevin Morrison.

{snip}

Morrison showed what appeared to be screenshots of time-stamped location maps with Naqvi’s phone showing her at Broadview Detention Center in Chicago and later at the Dodge County detention center in Wisconsin, where Naqvi said she was taken before being tossed out on the street without transportation after a 43-hour ordeal.

The story relayed through Naqvi’s friends and family, alleging more than 150 miles of travel in federal custody, effectively incommunicado, was astonishing enough. But there were many more twists to come over the course of a month of new revelations.

The Department of Homeland Security quickly denied Naqvi was taken into custody at the airport. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt went further, saying not only part of Naqvi’s story is false, but all of it.

{snip}

The questions about Naqvi’s story started when her then-boyfriend, suspicious after her claims of ICE detention started going viral, called law enforcement, Schmidt said, resulting in a cascade of private text messages and surveillance videos obtained by his office showing a very different timeline.

Naqvi, who is 28 and also goes by Sunny and Summer, according to public records, is not being charged with any crime, but the sheriff says she defamed him by claiming his office kept her behind bars, and now he’s suing her and the politician who illuminated her story in a million-dollar defamation case.

{snip}

The Department of Homeland Security confirms Naqvi was pulled aside for a secondary screening on March 5 after returning from a trip to Turkey “based on law enforcement checks.” But the story diverges dramatically from Naqvi’s account after that.

{snip}

Morrison initially accused the DHS of falsifying the post.

{snip}

The commissioner – who was also a candidate for Congress at the time – said he considered the cell phone location maps conclusive.

{snip}

At Morrison’s request, local law enforcement searched the building, which has been the focal point of anti-ICE protests and allegations of detainee mistreatment for months.

{snip}

That did not persuade the family either.

“The cops were lying to our faces,” Naqvi’s sister, Sarah Afzal, said at the news conference.

Afzal and Morrison say Naqvi told them she and coworkers on the same trip who had been detained were later transferred to Dodge County and released without charge. After nearly two full days in custody, Naqvi claimed, she had to hitchhike to a local Holiday Inn Express where her family picked her up.

Schmidt said in a statement they had no record of Naqvi – or anyone else in ICE custody – being booked into the jail during the timeframe she gave. He initially asked Naqvi to contact him to try to straighten things out.

Someone else called Schmidt instead, he said. A boyfriend with information who said Naqvi was the one who had been taking him for a ride.

{snip}

Naqvi said she had been in Turkey on a trip for work, but her then-boyfriend – who Schmidt says he can’t identify due to Wisconsin’s victim’s rights law – told them he actually paid for it with $12,000 from his own tax refund, part of $25,000 he allegedly spent on Naqvi, the sheriff said, “because he thought there was a very long-term relationship in their future.”

The now ex-boyfriend told law enforcement that after her return to the US he also paid for Naqvi to check into a Hampton Inn about three miles from O’Hare shortly after she was released from secondary screening.

A folio obtained from the hotel showed Naqvi checked in at 1:17 p.m. Text messages Schmidt says were provided by the victim showed she also asked him for permission to use his credit card to order food and pay for a spa treatment while she was claiming to be in federal custody.

Naqvi’s ex-boyfriend told investigators she convinced him to drive her from the suburban Chicago hotel to another hotel in Dodge County, Wisconsin – a Holiday Inn Express – on March 7, where her family said they had picked her up after Naqvi said she was forced to hitchhike from the jail.

{snip}

The man’s testimony contradicting Naqvi’s account was corroborated, Schmidt said, by license plate reading cameras along the route and surveillance footage from a convenience store more than 20 miles away from the Dodge County Jail, showing Naqvi in the store at around the same time she said she was being released from jail.

In response to the images showing pings from Naqvi’s phone from Broadview and Dodge County, Schmidt said he believes those were falsified.

{snip}

Video obtained by the sheriff’s office from the Holiday Inn Express where Naqvi’s family picked her up shows the woman who appears to be Naqvi – wearing the same clothes seen in a photo posted by Morrison with her family – walking to the hotel only 15 minutes before being picked up by her family. Shortly after arriving, she is seen posing for a thumbs-up selfie in the hotel lobby.

{snip}

The sheriff said Naqvi’s boyfriend was also encouraged to pose to the media as one of the unnamed coworkers she had claimed were detained with her, but he refused.

Naqvi has never identified the other alleged coworkers, and no one has come forward claiming to have been detained with her. SAP was listed as Naqvi’s employer on her LinkedIn page, according to CNN affiliate WBBM. Her profile has since been taken down.

{snip}