A US citizen said she was illegally held by ICE. Surveillance video, the DHS and a million-dollar lawsuit say otherwise

By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — In a city that has been targeted for aggressive immigration enforcement, it was a compelling story.

A US citizen of Pakistani descent, Sundas Naqvi, said she was returning to the US from an overseas work trip when she and five coworkers were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Her story got the attention of a family friend, Cook County commissioner Kevin Morrison.

“It sounds like they are trying to create a cover-up. They are seeking not to have any accountability whatsoever. And I think this is terrifying and concerning to us all,” Morrison said in a news conference on March 8.

Morrison showed what appeared to be screenshots of time-stamped location maps with Naqvi’s phone showing her at Broadview Detention Center in Chicago and later at the Dodge County detention center in Wisconsin, where Naqvi said she was taken before being tossed out on the street without transportation after a 43-hour ordeal.

The story relayed through Naqvi’s friends and family, alleging more than 150 miles of travel in federal custody, effectively incommunicado, was astonishing enough. But there were many more twists to come over the course of a month of new revelations.

The Department of Homeland Security quickly denied Naqvi was taken into custody at the airport. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt went further, saying not only part of Naqvi’s story is false, but all of it.

“Sundas Naqvi was not detained by ICE at any time. She was not transported to Broadview detention facility. She was not transported across state lines to Dodge County by law enforcement… She was not in the custody of the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office,” Schmidt said in his own news conference on April 10.

The questions about Naqvi’s story started when her then-boyfriend, suspicious after her claims of ICE detention started going viral, called law enforcement, Schmidt said, resulting in a cascade of private text messages and surveillance videos obtained by his office showing a very different timeline.

Naqvi, who is 28 and also goes by Sunny and Summer, according to public records, is not being charged with any crime, but the sheriff says she defamed him by claiming his office kept her behind bars, and now he’s suing her and the politician who illuminated her story in a million-dollar defamation case.

“This is a serious accusation, and when it is not true, it does real damage,” said Schmidt.

DHS says Naqvi was pulled aside at airport, but briefly

The Department of Homeland Security confirms Naqvi was pulled aside for a secondary screening on March 5 after returning from a trip to Turkey “based on law enforcement checks.” But the story diverges dramatically from Naqvi’s account after that.

“Surveillance footage from O’Hare CLEARLY shows her entering secondary inspection at 10:46 a.m., and leaving secondary to the public area at 11:42 a.m.,” DHS wrote in an X post six days later. “Her claims of spending 43 hours in DHS custody are FALSE.”

Morrison initially accused the DHS of falsifying the post.

“Instead of releasing a clearly doctored photo, I call on DHS to release all of the relevant video at O’Hare Airport at the days and times in question,” Morrison said in a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The commissioner – who was also a candidate for Congress at the time – said he considered the cell phone location maps conclusive.

“I spoke with her around 1:30 on Friday (March 6), and then about an hour later, her phone started pinging right behind me at the Broadview ICE detention facility,” Morrison said in his news conference outside the building on March 8.

At Morrison’s request, local law enforcement searched the building, which has been the focal point of anti-ICE protests and allegations of detainee mistreatment for months.

“We can confirm that Sheriff’s Police looked for that individual at the Broadview ICE facility, but she was not there,” a spokesperson for the Cook County Sheriff’s office told CNN.

That did not persuade the family either.

“The cops were lying to our faces,” Naqvi’s sister, Sarah Afzal, said at the news conference.

Afzal and Morrison say Naqvi told them she and coworkers on the same trip who had been detained were later transferred to Dodge County and released without charge. After nearly two full days in custody, Naqvi claimed, she had to hitchhike to a local Holiday Inn Express where her family picked her up.

Schmidt said in a statement they had no record of Naqvi – or anyone else in ICE custody – being booked into the jail during the timeframe she gave. He initially asked Naqvi to contact him to try to straighten things out.

Someone else called Schmidt instead, he said. A boyfriend with information who said Naqvi was the one who had been taking him for a ride.

Sheriff calls disappearance part of a ‘romantic scam’

Naqvi said she had been in Turkey on a trip for work, but her then-boyfriend – who Schmidt says he can’t identify due to Wisconsin’s victim’s rights law – told them he actually paid for it with $12,000 from his own tax refund, part of $25,000 he allegedly spent on Naqvi, the sheriff said, “because he thought there was a very long-term relationship in their future.”

The now ex-boyfriend told law enforcement that after her return to the US he also paid for Naqvi to check into a Hampton Inn about three miles from O’Hare shortly after she was released from secondary screening.

A folio obtained from the hotel showed Naqvi checked in at 1:17 p.m. Text messages Schmidt says were provided by the victim showed she also asked him for permission to use his credit card to order food and pay for a spa treatment while she was claiming to be in federal custody.

Naqvi’s ex-boyfriend told investigators she convinced him to drive her from the suburban Chicago hotel to another hotel in Dodge County, Wisconsin – a Holiday Inn Express – on March 7, where her family said they had picked her up after Naqvi said she was forced to hitchhike from the jail.

“Her first shower was actually today, and she was able to eat some food,” Afzal said on March 8.

The man’s testimony contradicting Naqvi’s account was corroborated, Schmidt said, by license plate reading cameras along the route and surveillance footage from a convenience store more than 20 miles away from the Dodge County Jail, showing Naqvi in the store at around the same time she said she was being released from jail.

In response to the images showing pings from Naqvi’s phone from Broadview and Dodge County, Schmidt said he believes those were falsified.

“I’m here to tell you that in the world of AI, that in the world of technology that we live in, things like this can be spoofed very easy,” the sheriff said. “The evidence strongly suggests these location images were manipulated and are unreliable.”

Video obtained by the sheriff’s office from the Holiday Inn Express where Naqvi’s family picked her up shows the woman who appears to be Naqvi – wearing the same clothes seen in a photo posted by Morrison with her family – walking to the hotel only 15 minutes before being picked up by her family. Shortly after arriving, she is seen posing for a thumbs-up selfie in the hotel lobby.

“The timeline being claimed is not physically possible based on the evidence we have,” said Schmidt, “and that matters.”

The sheriff said Naqvi’s boyfriend was also encouraged to pose to the media as one of the unnamed coworkers she had claimed were detained with her, but he refused.

Naqvi has never identified the other alleged coworkers, and no one has come forward claiming to have been detained with her. SAP was listed as Naqvi’s employer on her LinkedIn page, according to CNN affiliate WBBM. Her profile has since been taken down.

“Sunny (Sundas) Naqvi is not and was never an SAP employee,” the company told CNN.

Morrison – who has since lost the congressional primary in his district – declined to respond to the sheriff’s statement this week. “I cannot comment on pending litigation at this time,” he told CNN by email.

Naqvi has not responded to requests for comment from CNN and other journalists. Afzal did not return CNN’s messages requesting a response to the sheriff’s allegations. She told CNN affiliate WISN, “What reason would we have to lie about this and get a target on our backs as brown women?”

Naqvi has spotty history on serious allegations

This is not the first time Sundas Naqvi has been accused of making up a serious allegation.

In 2019, Naqvi accused a then-University of Illinois professor, Joe Petry, of sexual misconduct and offering “sex in exchange for an A+ in his class,” the News-Gazette of Champaign, Illinois, reported.

Petry acknowledged a relationship with a former student but said it was consensual and denied doing anything wrong.

“I am far from a perfect individual, but this does not justify the University’s utter disregard for its contractual obligations, and the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ approach taken against me,” Petry said in a statement from his attorneys announcing a $7.9 million lawsuit against the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, saying the school reneged on a promise to fully investigate Naqvi’s claims in exchange for his resignation.

The university’s investigative report later obtained by CNN affiliate WISN found that Naqvi’s sexual misconduct allegations were “not credible.”

A judge issued an order in 2020 requiring Naqvi to have no contact with Petry, saying Petry “is a victim of two or more acts of following: monitoring, observing, surveilling, threatening, communication, or interfering or damaging property or pets by Respondent,” according to records from Champaign County Circuit Court.

CNN’s requests for comment to the attorneys who represented Petry in his lawsuit were not returned. University of Illinois spokesperson Pat Wade told CNN they cannot comment on disciplinary records of students but confirmed that Petry’s lawsuit against the board is still pending.

In 2019, Naqvi was convicted of filing a false police report in Skokie, WISN reports, saying a claim she made that she was sexually assaulted by a man she knew was not reasonably possible based on cell phone data, traffic cameras and toll records. CNN was unable to independently confirm her conviction.

She faced criminal charges in 2020 alleging she had damaged the property of one former boyfriend and lied about another, but those cases were dismissed by the local prosecutor, the News-Gazette reported.

Naqvi also faced two cases of allegedly filing a false police report in Champaign County. She was acquitted in one, and charges were dropped in the other, court records show.

Sheriff’s lawsuit now in federal court

Despite the evidence Schmidt has presented suggesting the whole thing was a hoax, the sheriff’s lawsuit – filed in his personal capacity – may not have an easy time in court. A defamation lawsuit against a public figure must show that false statements were made with “actual malice” and damaged the reputation of the victim.

In the case of Dodge County, the sheriff has previously acknowledged his jail accepts ICE detainees under a contract with the federal government dating back to the Obama administration.

Schmidt argues the claim that he was part of a “cover-up” with the Department of Homeland Security, that the damage of this story goes beyond just him personally.

“I take it personally when my staff are called liars,” he said while noting some of the angry comments his department received after Morrison’s news conference.

Schmidt was successful in his first hurdle of the case, as a judge agreed to allow him to serve the subpoenas for the hotel surveillance video he used to argue Naqvi was lying.

“The statements made ‘caused reputational harm and damages’ to Schmidt, ‘particularly as he prepared for a re-election campaign,’” Judge Brett Ludwig agreed.

Naqvi and Morrison have not yet filed responses to the complaint in court. An attorney who spoke for Naqvi at last month’s press conference told CNN he is not representing her in this case.

Schmidt acknowledges a civil suit is not his first choice for a response but says even if Naqvi’s story was entirely made up, she didn’t violate any laws in Wisconsin.

“I don’t have any charges here in Dodge County to bring against her. My only recourse is to make sure that the public knows that she can’t do this,” Schmidt said.

CNN’s David Williams contributed to this report.

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