Jackie and her kids had been missing for four days.

When Mimi Lettunich, a family friend with powerful social connections in Portland, Oregon, learned of their disappearance, she spared no effort to locate the immigrant mother and her four U.S. citizen children.

It would take another eight days — and an unorthodox road trip by a hands-on member of Congress — before the Trump administration would even disclose where it was holding the family. And it would be four days after that before the children were released to Lettunich and set free from conditions likened in a congressional hearing to “ psychological torture .”

The story of Jackie Merlos is singular and conscience-shocking. “They literally disappeared her — kept her from due process in the presence of her four U.S. citizen childr

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