WTF: Brazil Gives Legal Custody of U.S. Teen Runaway to Her Online Boyfriend's Uncle?

[Jeff Dunsavage]

You can't make this shit up! More than a decade after Elian Gonzalez was ripped from his family's arms at gunpoint in Florida and returned to Cuba after his mother and uncles drowned bringing him to freedom in the U.S., Brazilian authorities have given legal custody Florida runaway to the family of the boyfriend she met online. Read the fully story.
"If this was a senator's daughter, if this was a congressman's daughter, somebody would've gotten her back already," said Robert Hernandez, daughter of the 15-year-old runaway girl, Samantha.

Damn straight, Mr. Hernandez!

According to CNN:

"On August 29, Samantha and her boyfriend, whom she had met online less than a year ago, boarded a flight from Boston, Massachusetts, to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, with Samantha using a fake passport, police said.

"A federal police commissioner in Minas Gerais state, where Belo Horizonte is located, said that Samantha arrived at the Confins International Airport and went through the customs process, where it was determined that the Brazilian passport she was using belonged to someone else.

"Because Samantha is a minor, she was transferred to the custody of Brazil's civil police, which will investigate the crime. She was not immediately sent back to the United States because the crime she is accused of committing does not allow for immediate repatriation, the official said.

Instead, she was released to her boyfriend's uncle, without any consultation with her parents in the United States, the father said.

"Details about her boyfriend, his nationality and that of his uncle were not immediately known."