A major row broke out after Sunny Naqvi’s family claimed she was detained for about 43 hours upon arrival at a Chicago airport despite being a U.S. citizen, but federal authorities disputed the claim. The Department of Homeland Security said these claims are patently untrue. Naqvi was referred for a secondary examination, which delayed her for 90 minutes. She was not detained or transferred to ICE custody. After the Department of Homeland Security filed the claim, some social media users dug into Sunny Naqvi’s past cases and called her a lying liar.
Accused of sexual harassment and assault against ex-boyfriend in the past
Citing old reports, they said Naqvi was the same woman who was charged in 2019 with intimidation and aggravated unlawful restraint. Her then-ex-boyfriend complained that after they broke up, Naqvi contacted him to request the removal of a social media post on Reddit in which he posted something about a sexual harassment investigation involving Naqvi and a professor. Naqvi appeared with another man and brandished a knife, resulting in the post being deleted from his computer. Naqvi was later acquitted of intimidation charges after a court found too many inconsistencies in what his ex had said. That sparked another case involving Naqvi, who accused former University of Illinois professor Joseph Petry of sexual harassment. Petry claimed he was blackmailed by his accusers and resigned.
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Naqvi’s sister claims she was detained at O’Hare International Airport while returning from a trip with five other travelers. She was then transferred to an immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois, and then to the Dodge County Jail in Wisconsin. It all happened between Thursday and Saturday, and she was released from the Dodge County Jail on Saturday morning, the family claims. They said her cellphone location showed up at an ICE facility, but the feds told the family she was not in custody. Cook County Commissioner Kevin Morrison defended the family’s claims and said the government was lying because due process was not followed in detaining U.S. citizens. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said Naqvi’s family was lying because there was no record of Naqvi being detained. Reed Showalter, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Illinois, said Naqvi was with his family when he disappeared and that the government was lying. “I was there for the entire incident. It’s not just that this administration is making people disappear. It’s that the entire time they were detained, the official line was that they had been released. When Sonny was in Broadview, Illinois, and her phone showed her location there, ICE claimed they never even met a woman. When she was released from another ICE detention center onto the streets of Juneau, Wisconsin, they claimed she had never been detained. People don’t just show up at the ICE facility in Juneau, Wisconsin,” Showalter wrote.
