JUNEAU – Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt spent much of the last month personally investigating an Illinois woman’s claims that she was detained for hours by immigration authorities at the O’Hare airport in Chicago, taken across state lines to the Dodge County Jail then released onto the street in the middle of the night.
And on April 10, Schmidt presented his findings in a detailed slideshow.
“None of that is true,” he said.
The evidence he offered provides little room for Sunny Naqvi’s narrative to be accurate. Naqvi, a 28-year-old Skokie woman and a U.S. citizen, was actually checked into a hotel across from O’Hare during the time in March she claimed to be in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to receipts from the Rosemont Hampton Inn and Suites. Eventually, a now-former boyfriend drove her to a hotel in Beaver Dam, according to Flock camera stills of his car and security footage from a Slinger convenience store and from the Holiday Inn and Suites in Beaver Dam.
Schmidt is now suing Naqvi and one of her supporters, Cook County Commissioner Kevin Morrison, for defamation, asking for $1 million. He argues he and his sheriff’s office suffered reputational damage by her claims. Naqvi’s story gained national attention but soon faced scrutiny as Schmidt, the Department of Homeland Security and other officials said they had no record of her detention. He described Naqvi’s claims as a hoax at the April 10 news conference.
“I will not stand by while false narratives are used to portray law enforcement as something it is not. I take it personally when my staff are called liars,” he said at a news conference. “Dodge County is not the place you want to make up a hoax about.”
Naqvi’s sister, Sarah Afzal, who has been the spokesperson for her, did not respond to a request for comment.
The biggest break in the investigation came when Schmidt interviewed the ex-boyfriend, who he said approached the sheriff and provided text messages from Naqvi. That boyfriend of three years gave Naqvi as much as $25,000 over the course of a month, including spending his entire $12,000 tax return so she could travel to Turkey, Schmidt said. The sheriff described the money as an attempt to defraud the boyfriend as part of a false promise for a long-term relationship.
But Schmidt has not found any criminal charges that apply to her actions in Dodge County, so he is not recommending charges against her. He said he’s keeping the investigation open in case new information arises. He said he hasn’t gotten much interest from Illinois authorities to bring charges against Naqvi, arguing it was a political choice.
Schmidt said it remains unclear why Naqvi, a Pakistani-American born in Illinois, claimed she was held by ICE.
“For the life of me I can’t figure out why someone would do that,” Schmidt said.
Her narrative initially prompted an outcry, as it seemed to be among a number of federal immigration arrests – some violent or wrongful – that have dominated the national spotlight. President Donald Trump’s hallmark mass deportation campaign has swept up more than 170 U.S. citizens, according to ProPublica reporting, and DHS under Trump has a record of mischaracterizing situations and obscuring key details.
Schmidt, a Republican sheriff, said he got rude messages after Naqvi’s story went public. The Dodge County Jail serves as the only long-term ICE detention center in the state. He said he wanted to make clear that “ICE is not the enemy” and “law enforcement is not the enemy.”
Timeline of evidence seems to disprove Naqvi’s story
The timeline Schmidt uncovered in his investigation does not line up with Naqvi’s narrative. Here are some of his key findings:
- After she left an inspection area within the Customs and Border Protection area of O’Hare at 11:42 a.m. on March 5, Naqvi checked into a Hampton Inn across the street from the airport at 1:17 p.m. She checked out midday March 8.
- She texted the boyfriend just before 2 p.m. on March 5 saying she was in the hotel room. She texted him several times while at the hotel to ask to use his card to pay for various things, such as food and her “spa lady.”
- On March 7, Naqvi asked the boyfriend to drive her to Wisconsin under the guise of helping her sister with car trouble. During the drive, she asked him to head to a Beaver Dam hotel.
- Security footage shows Naqvi and the boyfriend at a Slinger gas station and inside its convenience store about 5:30 a.m. on March 7. She is wearing the same striped sweater as she wore in a family “reunion” photo Morrison posted on Facebook.
- Flock cameras, which capture photos of license plates, got two photos of the boyfriend’s car after that along the route to the Beaver Dam hotel. Surveillance videos show Naqvi arriving at the hotel and soon after, around 7 a.m., her sister arriving to meet her and pick her up.
The boyfriend told Schmidt that in addition to the $12,000 he gave Naqvi to travel to Turkey, he took out a $3,000 loan and maxed out a credit card’s $3,000 limit, giving that money to her too. Part of it apparently paid for a medical procedure in Turkey, Schmidt said, but he did not know the nature of the procedure.
Morrison, a friend of Naqvi’s sister, was an early, prominent voice speaking on her behalf. He was running for Congress at the time and later lost his primary race.
Morrison and Naqvi’s sister, Afzal, held a news conference in Illinois March 8 to call attention to what they described as the illegal detention of a U.S. citizen. They provided screenshots that apparently showed Naqvi’s phone location inside the Broadview ICE processing facility in Illinois and the Dodge County Jail. Schmidt has said he believes those images were fabricated.
At the time, Afzal described a frantic search for her sister and said she went to both facilities and begged for them to release her sister, showing the phone location images to dismissive detention center staff. Schmidt said Afzal did visit the Dodge County Jail early March 7. At the news conference, he said he couldn’t comment on whether Afzal was aware of Naqvi’s deception.
Schmidt’s lawsuit goes beyond the $1 million he’s seeking in damages, he said. He pointed to prior cases in which, he said, Naqvi apparently filed false police reports against boyfriends as well as a college professor.
“To me we have a victim here who was played,” Schmidt said, referring to Naqvi’s now-former boyfriend. “She continues to do this and get away with it.”
Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter who reports on religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at [email protected] or 920-323-5758.
This story was updated to add new information.
