Torres: Faced with potential trafficking charge, Congressman Posey saved me

When I heard the news last month that 8-term Congressman Bill Posey was retiring, I couldn't help but to think back to something he did for me early on during his tenure in Washington.

It was something that I will probably always remember. The date was Jan. 16, 2010. I had just finished reporting for five days from earthquake-ravaged Haiti. I was travelling with my good friend, Joe Hurston, a Christian missionary and a few other people including television reporter Marci Gonzalez, now Marci Rand.

We landed in Haiti only 20 hours after the earthquake and I'll always remember Hurston telling me to look for planes as we approached the airport in Port-au-Prince because there was no air traffic control. There was chaos everywhere. An armed gang tried to extract a toll from us while driving but Hurston would have none of that.

The trip was full of all the heartache, anguish, devastation you can imagine. Dead bodies littered the streets of Port-au-Prince as the morgue could accommodate no more death. But there were also individual signs that convinced me the human spirit is capable of overcoming so much.

Anyway, during that trip, we were given a small child, two-year-old Mishna Prezille, who needed surgeries on her feet. She had already travelled back and forth to the U.S. several times for previous operations. Dr. Stephen Badolato in Melbourne had power of attorney and she was going to be in his care for her medical procedures.

The orphanage she was staying at in Bon Repos, Haiti, had been significantly damaged and they would no longer be able to meet her medical needs.

So, we landed our small Cessna aircraft at the airport in West Palm Beach to go through customs and immediately there seemed to be a problem. We were told to get back on the plane and wait while agents figured out what was wrong. After a while, agents came and told us that we were being held for trafficking the child.

Impossible, I thought, as Hurston and his co-pilot made sure the girl's passport was up to date and her one-year visa to enter the U.S. was good for another eight months. But, it turns out that the letters C.W.O.P., scrawled across the visa in pencil meant bad news for us.

The letters stood for cancel without prejudice. Her visa was no longer valid.

I remembered taking my laptop and placing it on the wing of the airplane in order to write a story that had been promised for the next day's newspaper. Hours and hours passed. We all began to worry. It didn't help that the Immigration agents treated us like hardened criminals. It was a legitimately scary situation and we weren't sure what to do.

As my phone was on its last few bars of battery life, I called my wife and asked her to reach out to Congressman Posey. I didn't have much hope she would be able to reach him on a Saturday night. But, within seconds my phone rang. It was Posey. He wanted to know what was going on and then assured me he was working on securing our release.

Meanwhile, he had given my wife the phone number to the Immigration officer in charge and told her to get people to call. She did, posting the situation and phone number on Facebook. My friends inundated the Immigration office at the airport with phone calls.

It was close to midnight when Posey's maneuvering and the phone calls seemed to pay off and we were released. They had held us for five hours.

Politicians work for us. Our taxes pay their salaries but we rarely have personal interactions with them. In a world when we can so often feel overlooked or ignored, Posey was there for me. I'll always be grateful.

I've thanked Posey over the years for what he did but I'm not sure he ever really understood how comforting it was to hear his voice that night and the promise he made to get us released. Mishna was sent to Boys Town Children's Facility in Miami and had to wait months before Badolato and his lawyers were able to get her released so she could have her surgery.

In a postscript to the story, I reached out to Hurston this week and he told me Mishna was eventually adopted by a family in New York and the last he heard, the teenager was doing well. As for Posey? Well, I wish him a happy retirement and again offer my gratitude.

Contact Torres at jtorres@floridatoday.com. You can follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @johnalbertorres.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard columnist recalls night Congressman Posey saved him from jail