Teen accusing border officials of falsely imprisoning him and his sister appears in court

SAN DIEGO (CN) — A family claiming the federal government falsely imprisoned a 14-year-old and a nine-year-old at the U.S.-Mexico border after accusing them of human trafficking and coercing them into making false statements about who the younger child was got their first day in court Tuesday.

“That’s what I understood from them, that I needed to lie to them so that I could get out with my sister,” Oscar Amparo Medina testified Tuesday at his bench trial against the U.S. government and several Customs and Border Protection officers, who Amparo Medina and his family say pressured and coerced him into making a false confession.

Amparo Medina, now 19, explained why, while being held in custody at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, he was willing to write a letter that said his nine-year-old sister, also being held in custody, was actually his cousin.   

Border patrol officers “ignored the rules for our most vulnerable citizens,” Joseph McMullen, the family’s attorney, in his opening remarks in the bench trial in a San Diego federal courtroom in front of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a Barack Obama appointee.

“They knew that if they ignored the rules, they’d hurt children and they did it anyway,” he said.    

In March 2019, Amparo Medina and his sister, both U.S. citizens, arrived at the Tijuana-San Ysidro, California, border crossing early in the morning to make it to school in San Ysidro on time. 

The normally routine procedure of crossing the border turned harrowing when a border patrol officer claimed the girl depicted in the sister’s passport photo was different than the child in front of them because the picture showed either a “mole,” as the government describes it, or a “dot,” as the defense describes it, on the child’s face that was not visible on the child that showed up to the border crossing. 

The family claims that the children were first questioned together, and then separately. After asking about the children’s cousins, an officer accused Amparo Medina’s sister of actually being their older cousin.

The children were then driven to another facility and placed in different holding cells. The family says Amparo Medina was told he would be arrested and charged with human and organ trafficking if he didn’t admit that his sister was actually his cousin.

After hours of interrogations and intimidation and promises he would be released if he signed a confession, Amparo Medina agreed to the false statement, his family claims, after which he was released from custody. 

Officers then showed his sister his false statement, after which she falsely confessed to being her cousin, but, 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. 

“This case is simply about lies repeated,” Stephanie Sotomayor, attorney for the government, said Tuesday.

The government argued that the children’s inconsistent answers to officer’s questions at the border raised red flags that they were duty bound to investigate until they could be fully resolved to make sure the children weren’t victims of human trafficking.

Amparo Medina made a bad decision to lie to officers about the identity of his sister, she added, in order to get him and his sister to school in San Ysidro faster.

“The plaintiffs lied in their deposition, Your Honor,” Sotomayor said. “And frankly, Your Honor, the plaintiffs are still lying and that’s why we're here today.”   

Amparo Medina said on the stand that he felt like a criminal, but he hopes his family’s lawsuit will make sure nobody else suffers what he and his sister went through.

At the close of his testimony, Amparo Medina said he was “marked” by his traumatic experience in custody five years ago, but he’s since overcome it. He went on to graduate high school, and he’s now in school to become a dental technician.   

The family is asking the court to award them a yet to be determined amount of money for the trauma inflicted on the family.

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