Kairi Shepherd

 

As a 3-month-old baby Kairi Abha Shepherd was adopted from India by a Utah woman, by the name of Erlene Shepherd, who died of breast cancer before she she could file citizenship papers, in 1991.

In 2003 Kairi got caught forging checks to pay for her meth habit and as a result now faces deportation to India due to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

Kairi suffers from Multiple Sclerosis and is currently detained by Homeland Security, sometimes allowed to take her MS medication, sometimes not.

Twice, immigration Judge William Nixon has dismissed the government's Notice to Appear against her - once because everyone involved in the case, including prosecutors, assumed Kairi's legal adoption would grant her citizenship, and a second time because her volunteer attorney Alan Smith argued the government could not refile its Notice to Appear to try to change Nixon's original ruling. Undeterred, local ICE prosecutors have appealed to the agency's Board of Immigration Appeals.

Meantime, Kairi has been charged with violating her probation for the original forgery charge. She didn't notify her probation officer she was being held all those months in jail by Immigration. A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 4.

Placement agency:  Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA)

Status: In Dentention