A federal judge in California has ruled that the U.S. government violated the rights of two U.S. citizens by detaining them for hours when they attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to go to school. As a result, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has awarded the family of the two children over $1.5 million.
Oscar Amparo Medina and his sister, Julia Isabel Amparo (who were 14 and nine years old at the time of the incident) were stopped at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing in March 2019. The situation escalated when a border patrol officer claimed that the girl depicted in Julia's passport photo did not match the child in front of them due to a discrepancy involving a facial mark.
