A Skokie woman made headlines this week after her family and a local politician claimed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security detained her for nearly 48 hours before she ultimately ended up in Wisconsin — an extraordinary story disputed by accounts from the federal government, two sheriff’s departments and her purported employer.
Summer Sundas “Sunny” Naqvi’s family alleges the 28-year-old woman was taken into custody Thursday morning at O’Hare International Airport after arriving on a flight from Istanbul. Naqvi, whom Cook County records show was born in Evanston, allegedly told her family that she was detained at the airport and then taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers in two different states.
Cook County Commissioner Kevin Morrison, a family friend, told the Tribune that Naqvi was sent to an ICE facility in west suburban Broadview and, later, a Wisconsin jail that frequently houses Chicago-area detainees before she was released.
But in a statement Monday, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said that Naqvi had only been directed through additional security screening upon arriving at the Chicago airport Thursday and was cleared to leave. She “departed CBP” of her own volition less than two hours after landing, the statement said.
“The passenger’s claims are blatantly false,” said Harry Fones, principal deputy assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security. “Ms. Naqvi departed CBP within 90 minutes of her arrival to the United States. Ms. Naqvi was not taken into custody or transferred to ICE for detention.”
In a social media post Wednesday evening, DHS shared two still images to bolster their account of Naqvi’s interaction with O’Hare immigration in a so-called secondary inspection room. The first, marked March 5 at 10:46 a.m., showed a young woman with black hair in a fluorescent-lit area lined with benches. The second, stamped 11:42 a.m., shows a figure with similarly dark hair facing away from the cameras and going through a door marked EXIT.
The images’ quality and angles make it impossible to tell whether the figures are the same person, though they share similar characteristics.
“HERE ARE THE RECEIPTS,” the agency wrote.
HERE ARE THE RECEIPTS:
As we said Sunny Naqvi entered the CBP area at 10:21 am.
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.
Her claims of spending 43 hours in DHS custody… https://t.co/GkqWBLS6sn pic.twitter.com/SWOJmMulcy
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) March 11, 2026
DHS didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up Tribune request to release the full video recording.
Over the weekend, Naqvi’s supporters, including Morrison, said that she had been traveling on a work trip for a German software company, when she was detained at O’Hare. Naqvi had been flying back to the U.S. with five co-workers, all of whom are of South Asian descent and all of whom were detained along with her, Morrison and her sister said.
A LinkedIn page that listed Naqvi as a “Senior Solution Architect” for SAP SE on Monday has now been taken down.
A spokesperson for SAP — a multinational German software company — said that Naqvi had never been employed there, nor had any of its employees been detained at O’Hare.
Neither Naqvi, her sister nor Morrison have provided the identities of the co-workers to Tribune reporters seeking to verify the story.
Meanwhile, statements from the sheriff’s offices in Cook County and Dodge County, Wisconsin, said there was no indication of her being detained at local facilities.
The Department of Homeland Security has an agreement with Dodge County to house immigration-related detainees, including those from the Chicago area, and county officials say that jail logs “confirm that no female inmates or detainees from the federal government were admitted or released.”
“Because no booking of Ms. Naqvi ever took place, the Sheriff’s Office does not have contact information for her; however, we are asking that she contact us so we may speak with her regarding the allegation and obtain evidence of the incident from her,” Dodge County officials wrote in a statement on Monday.
And at the behest of Morrison, Cook County sheriff’s officers got permission to enter and search the Broadview detention center for Naqvi on Friday, but they didn’t find anybody in the cells, spokesperson Matt Walberg said.
DHS, which released two statements about the situation, initially said there was video footage backing up its claim that Naqvi left the airport at 11:43 a.m. The federal agency has declined the Tribune’s request to see the surveillance recording.
The Chicago Department of Aviation, which runs operations at the airport, said it “did not find any records related to the incident,” considers any video footage exempt and “does not have access to security footage from areas of O’Hare International Airport that are operated by our federal partners” in response to the Tribune’s Freedom of Information Act request for video.
Reached by phone Monday afternoon, Naqvi did not dispute the version of events shared by Morrison and her sister, Sarah Afzal.
Pressed on the chronology of her detention beginning at O’Hare — and then Broadview and then Wisconsin — Naqvi said she did not want to make a statement.
By Tuesday, she stopped answering questions.
Her attorney, Robert Held, continued to defend her on Tuesday and argued that DHS has a history of misleading the public. Held told the Tribune he reached a CBP chief at O’Hare over the phone earlier on Saturday. That officer allegedly told him that Naqvi had only been detained for two minutes and “was free to walk out the door, and did so,” which Held said was not his understanding of what transpired and he found the government’s account difficult to believe given that “ICE has been dishonest in the past.”
Brittni Rivera, a Chicago immigration lawyer, said she also made calls on Morrison’s behalf Friday to an assistant attorney at the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago, and they told her Naqvi was not in CBP or ICE custody and “there was no record of her” being processed.
But DHS “has not earned anybody’s trust in the last year,” she said. Since October, Rivera said, her law firm has filed hundreds of habeas corpus lawsuits accusing the federal government of illegally detaining immigrants. A potential false report would most damage actual detainees who are fighting for justice, she said.
“It’s not unbelievable that this could happen,” Rivera said on Tuesday. “We’re seeing it every day with stops involving racial profiling. … There are thousands of people being detained for real in the United States right now.”
Federal immigration officials have swept up U.S. citizens in immigration enforcement campaigns around the country. While U.S. citizens and other permanent residents in Chicago have been questioned and briefly detained by federal agents, the Tribune has not reviewed any cases of citizens who claimed they had been being transferred to detention facilities out of state prior to Naqvi’s case.
The public first became aware of Naqvi’s claims when Morrison, who is running for Congress, posted screenshots Friday to his campaign Facebook page of her alleged cellphone location. The images appeared to show she was inside the ICE processing center in Broadview, then later at a detention center in Dodge County, Wisconsin.
“I think im at an ice detention center,” Naqvi wrote in one apparent text message at 5:39 p.m. Friday that Morrison posted online that evening.
The posts sparked immediate backlash, with a hastily organized protest in Broadview Friday night. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and several Democratic candidates in next week’s primary election issued public condemnations of the alleged treatment of a U.S. citizen. On Sunday, Morrison and other political candidates held a news conference outside the immigration processing facility in Broadview demanding answers.
At the protest, Naqvi did not speak or appear in front of the cameras.
In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Afzal said she hesitated before telling her mother Friday that her little sister was missing.
“I think I tried to hide the fact for a little while … like, how do I break this to her?” Afzal said. “Eventually, I had to break it to her, and she had to go sit in the car at the protest because she couldn’t be around people.”
DHS first issued a statement Monday recounting that it had contacted Naqvi on March 6 and told her “she needed to let individuals know she was okay.”
“She said she would and is now claiming she is going to hold a rally outside Broadview to detail her detention,” the statement continued.
The same statement suggested Naqvi’s criminal history caused her to be flagged for additional scrutiny as she went through customs upon arriving at O’Hare.
Fones, the DHS spokesperson, retracted it an hour later, saying the message was “sent in error,” and provided a shorter statement reiterating she was referred to secondary security screening “based on law enforcement checks” and left within 90 minutes of landing at 10:21 a.m..
“CBP did NOT transfer any individuals to Broadview or perform any phone detentions from her flight on Thursday, March 5th,” Fones wrote.
Public records show that Naqvi pleaded guilty in 2022 to making a false police report alleging sexual assault in 2019. She completed two years of probation for that case in 2024, records show, and the case was then dismissed.
On Monday, Naqvi stuck with the broad strokes of her story, repeating Morrison and Afzal’s claims that she’d been held in custody.
Naqvi agreed that the agency had called her asking her to tell her family that she was OK. She said the call came after her release from the Wisconsin facility. She declined to answer questions about her criminal and work history.
Morrison, a Democratic candidate in Illinois’ 8th Congressional District, said Monday he still found Naqvi’s version of events credible. He said he saw her both Saturday and Sunday after she came home, and “I think it was finally hitting her, what had transpired.”
Morrison told the Tribune that Naqvi’s mother showed him her phone in person Friday evening, with Naqvi’s location pinging inside the Broadview facility.
Afzal said she was about to file a missing person report with the Skokie Police Department Saturday when Naqvi called to say she was being released. Afzal said her sister’s location was pinging to Juneau, Wisconsin, which is home to the Dodge County jail.
Naqvi’s phone died just as her family pulled up to the detention facility, her sister said. As a backup plan, the family had agreed to meet her at a Holiday Inn in Dodge County, her sister said. Naqvi had walked to a gas station after leaving the jail and hitchhiked about 9 miles to the hotel, Afzal said.
The Tribune has reviewed screenshots from Afzal that apparently show Naqvi’s live location pinging at O’Hare, Broadview and in Dodge County, Wisconsin, along with a call history between the sisters. A reporter on Tuesday also asked Naqvi to send records of her iPhone location history to confirm the photos are not doctored, but she has not responded.
Morrison also said Naqvi’s passport was still missing after she came home, saying that his understanding was one of Naqvi’s co-workers returned to O’Hare sometime over the weekend to retrieve their belongings. He added that he hasn’t directly spoken with the other alleged detainees because they were “all just incredibly scared.”
Naqvi said Monday she wasn’t sure where her ID and other belongings were, but she believed her luggage was still at Broadview.
Walberg, the Cook County sheriff’s spokesperson, said officers did not find any luggage in their search of the suburban processing center.
After holding a news conference Sunday, Naqvi’s family declined to answer additional questions from the Tribune.
In a text message to the Tribune, Afzal said: “We’d like everyone to respect our family’s privacy due to safety concerns.”
Chicago Tribune’s Adriana Perez contributed.
Editor’s note: The story has been updated to reflect that records show after pleading guilty to filing a false police report in 2019, Naqvi served two years probation and the case was dropped as part of a deferred prosecution.
