“We Should Not Be Doing It”

Noem: My job is to question every single thing that this government does, and if it does not make sense, if it does not serve the people, it does not make us safe, it does not defend freedom, we should not be doing it pic.twitter.com/GkQzWho3Rl

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 13, 2025

So...

A Portland mother and her four children, who are U.S. citizens, are being detained in Ferndale by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, according to U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon’s 3rd congressional district.

The family has been held at the facility for nearly two weeks without any contact with legal representation or charges being filed, according to their lawyer, Jill Nedved with Gonzales Law Office in Seattle.

Dexter held a press conference Friday in front of the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) facility in Ferndale to highlight the case.

“An Oregon family was kidnapped and taken to an undisclosed location in Washington state,” Dexter said in a statement to the media. “After learning of this horror on Tuesday, my team worked for days to determine their whereabouts. I arrived in Bellingham on Thursday, where we ultimately located the family — after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) initially misled us.”

At the press conference Dexter said the children are U.S. citizens who should be enjoying their summer.

“Instead they have spent almost two weeks locked in a detention facility, cut off from the outside world, and disappeared by their own government.”

Kenia Jackeline (Jackie) Merlos, and her four children were detained when attempting to enter Canada on June 28 with Merlos’ mother, who was visiting from Honduras, Merlos’ country of origin. All four children are younger than age 10, according to reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The children’s grandmother was separated from the rest of the family at the time and sent to the Northwest Detention Facility in Tacoma. She had an active travel visa, Dexter said at the press conference.

Dexter speculated the reason the grandmother was separated was because the four children are U.S. citizens and therefore cannot be transferred to the Northwest Detention Center, as the facility does not take children, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not have the authority to hold them. However, U.S. citizens can be held by CBP for a limited time under specific circumstances.

The family has been in custody for nearly two weeks, with Dexter’s office learning about their disappearance on Monday, July 7.

“We didn’t know their location when we left Portland. We literally got into the car and started driving north, not knowing if we were going to Tacoma, Seattle or Bellingham,” Dexter said.

It took two days for Dexter’s office to find the family, and she was only able to confirm their location when they arrived at the Ferndale facility Thursday afternoon. Dexter’s office had originally been told the family was in a different location.

“We got here and we still didn’t know for sure they were here,” Dexter said. “We came here because we heard they were not at the Seattle field office, which is where we were told they were initially."

Only the worst of the worst:

“When we talk about ‘What do we want in our community?’ — hard-working, of course. They go to church, and not just participating. Jackie is the worship director at the church,” Lettunich said. “(They) are collaborating with community outreach and things like The Salvation Army. … Their kids are in Christian school, and they are involved in all kinds of different activities and sports. They just won a music competition, just a few weeks ago, and a trip to Disney. I think about how their community is sending them to Disneyland, and our government is sending them to detention.”

Kristi Noem is sure those kids and that grandmother broke the law:

Bream replied: "So to the point that you're going after the worst of the worst, you've got critics out there who are saying you are getting gardeners, you're getting hotel workers, you're going after you know people that have decades of roots within a particular community."

"Sixty percent of the people are being round up have no conviction or run in with the law at all," the host added.

"That's false! Absolutely false!" Noem exclaimed. "These are the individuals, over 70% of them have been convicted, or they have charges pending against them, because of the investigative work that has been done by a law enforcement officer. So it's simply not true."

The grandmother probably couldn’t pass the paper bag test. And the kids probably assaulted Border Patrol by standing next to their grandmother, and the agents hurt their hands shoving the kids aside.