How Interpol thwarted a mother's immigration case and she ended up in detention

Interpol's Red Notice system, an international police bulletin, can trigger unjust detentions as was the case for Salvadoran Jessica Barahona Martínez, a lesbian fleeing persecution who spent 6 years in immigration detention after her ICE arrest.

This report is a collaboration between NBC News and Sky News, both of which are owned by Comcast Corp.

WOODRIDGE, Va. — Jessica Barahona-Martínez and her family had already decorated their home for Christmas by Dec. 1, something the recently released 40-year-old had been dreaming of doing over the six years she was held in immigration detention in Louisiana.

She had fled persecution in her native El Salvador in 2016 and sought asylum in the U.S., only to be arrested a year later by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That was the beginning of an ongoing nightmare that kept her from her three children for years — even though she was granted asylum twice.

It was all because Barahona-Martínez’s name appeared in the Interpol Red Notice system — an international police bulletin usually associated with the world’s most wanted fugitives, including those accused of severe crimes like murder, sex trafficking and terrorism.

Her prolonged fight to be released, even after her Red Notice was deleted, has put into focus how U.S. immigration authorities can at times act as amplifiers of the harm caused to people who are punitively put on the international “most wanted” list by authorities in their native countries — prompting an urgent fight by legal advocates and some members of Congress to reduce the number of retaliatory Red Notices.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/interpol-mothers-immigration-case-detention-edited-rcna137904

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