Balford Henry, Senior Reporter
A 35-YEAR-OLD American woman, who was wrongfully deported to Jamaica on June 10, has finally been allowed back home by the US Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).
The matter of how Sharon McKnight ended up being deported from the land of her birth, the US, to the land of her grandparents, Jamaica, is still a puzzle for many New Yorkers even after she was allowed to return home on Sunday.
McKnight, who is said to be mentally challenged, was born in New York City to a Jamaican mother. She came to Jamaica some months ago to visit her sick grandfather in Manchester. But, when she tried to return home on June 10, via American Airlines from Kingston, INS officials claimed that her passport was tampered with.
She was detained, shackled to a chair and deported back to Jamaica the following day. She stayed with relatives in Manchester for a week until the US Consul in Kingston, Nicholas Williams, verified her American citizenship and granted her an affidavit of citizenship.
McKnight told American reporters that she was handcuffed and led downstairs the airport building, where her legs were shackled to the legs of a chair. She said that she was left bound overnight. She was flown back to Kingston and left at the Norman Manley International Airport. Airport "red caps" had to put together money to pay a taxi to take her back to Manchester.
The Gleaner understands that after she was detained at Kennedy International, her relatives were not informed of her situation, until they demanded to know why she was not released. When they learnt of her detention, they called her mother who rushed to the airport with her birth certificate, but she was ignored by the INS agents.
New York newspaper Newsday reported Russ Bergeron, an INS spokesman, as saying that their agents at Kennedy had determined that the person they turned away was not McKnight, but a cousin of hers. He also claimed that she was never handcuffed.
Mistreated
The INS also claimed that the woman they had turned away had actually, "admitted to a hoax, said she was born in Jamaica and that she had never been to New York".
But, Newsday, which had sent a staff reporter, John Moreno Gonzalez, to Kingston to speak with Miss McKnight's local relatives as well as the US Consulate in Kingston, said that she told them that it was she who was mistreated and deported back to Jamaica from Kennedy International.
Miss McKnight's mother said that it would have been impossible for any of her cousins to attempt to pass themselves off as her, because she was much slimmer than they.
She said that when she called Manchester to find out about her daughter's condition, a relative told her that when she returned from the airport she had to be taken to the hospital, because her ankles were swollen from the shackles which had been placed on her legs.
The US Consulate in Kingston did not issue a statement on the matter, but Counsellor for Public Affairs, Dr. J. Michael Korff-Rodriques, sent us copies of reports on the matter from Newsday, including the response of the local Consulate.
According to those reports, Consul General Williams met with Miss McKnight for about two hours in Kingston after she was sent back. Her mother, Eunice Benloss-Harris, and a sister, Claudia Hutchinson, flew to Kingston last week Friday with her American birth certificate and identification card to support her identity.
Her birth certificate indicated that she was born in East Meadow, Long Island, New York on March 21, 1965.
Miss McKnight's mother is a US citizen who immigrated from Jamaica in 1962.
INS officers at American airports have the right to detain and deport arrivals based on the provisions of the 1996 immigration law. But, it is understood that this is the first time those powers had resulted in the deportation of an American citizen.
Miss McKnight was reported as saying that after the ordeal, she would never travel to Jamaica again unless her mother was with her.
