Kamal Ghorui
A major row broke out after the federal administration contradicted the claims of the family members of Sunny Naqvi that she was detained for around 43 hours after arriving at a Chicago airport, though Naqvi is a US citizen. The Department of Homeland Security said the claims were blatantly false. Naqvi was referred for a secondary inspection that delayed her for 90 minutes. And she was not taken into custody or transferred to ICE for detention. After the claim of the DHS, several social media users dug up Sunny Naqvi’s past cases and called her a lying fraud.
Past accusation of sexual harassment, attacking ex-boyfriend
Citing old reports, they claimed Naqvi was the same woman who was charged in 2019 of intimidation and aggravated unlawful restraint. Her ex-boyfriend at that time complained that after their breakup Naqvi contacted him about deleting a social media post on Reddit where the ex-boyfriend posted something about a sexual harassment investigation that involved Naqvi and a professor. Naqvi turned up to meet him along with another person and got the post deleted from his computer, brandishing a knife.
Naqvi was later acquitted of intimidation as the court found too many inconsistencies in what the ex said. This leads to another case involving Naqvi who accused former University of Illinois professor Joseph Petry of sexual harassment. Petry claimed he was blackmailed by the accuser and resigned.
Detained by ICE or not
Naqvi’s sister claimed she was detained at O’Hare International Airport as she was returning from a trip along with five other people who were with her. Then she was transferred to an immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois and then to the Dodge County Jail in Wisconsin. All this happened between Thursday and Saturday, and on Saturday morning, she was released from the Dodge County jail, the family claimed. They said her phone location was showing at the ICE facility, though the federal administration told the family members that she was not in custody. Cook County Commissioner Kevin Morrison defended the family’s side of the story and said the administration was lying because no due process was followed in detaining a US citizen. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said Naqvi’s family was lying, as there was no record of Naqvi being taken into custody. Dem candidate from Illinois Congress Reed Showalter said the administration was lying as he was with the family when Naqvi was missing. “I was on the ground for this whole thing. The scary thing is not just that this administration is disappearing people. But that the whole time they were detained, the official story was that they were already released. While Sunny was in Broadview IL, and her phone showed her location there, ICE claimed they never even saw a woman. When she was released onto the street in Juneau WI from another ICE detention center, they were claiming she had never been detained. People don’t just show up at an ICE facility in Juneau WI,” Showalter wrote.
