A pregnant Taiwanese woman who went into labor during a trans-Pacific flight earlier this month has been deported from the United States, separated from her child, and may soon face a hefty bill.
The mother, identified in press reports only by her surname, Jian, gave birth to a baby girl during an Oct. 8 China Airlines flight.
Pilots diverted the plane, which was en route from Taiwan to Los Angeles, to an airport in Anchorage, Alaska, after cabin crew and a doctor onboard helped deliver the baby. The diversion reportedly cost the airline thousands of dollars — for which the government says Jian might be on the hook, Shanghaist reported on Tuesday.
"Compensation (to the airline) will likely be inevitable," said Taiwan's Transportation Minister, Chen Jian-yu.
On Saturday, Chen, one of the flight attendants on Jian's plane, accused the mother of failing to inform the airline that she was 36 weeks pregnant (Taiwanese law prohibits pregnant women to fly after 32 weeks without a doctor's approval).
"[She] has been lying since the day she bought a ticket, she did not tell the ticket agent that she was pregnant!" Chen wrote. "She wore wide and loose clothes to deliberately hide [her condition]."
Chen also wrote that while the crew and fellow passengers urged Jian into labor as her water broke, "the pregnant woman insisted on holding out (she refused to lie down, and kept on asking if we were near U.S. airspace)."
One of the flight's passengers, Amira Rajput, told ABC News that US Customs and Border Protection agents boarded the plane after it landed in Alaska, requesting to see Jian's passport.
"He told me that this is something foreign women do, to try and deliver overseas for citizenship," Rajput said. "This is a political issue. People die to come to this country."
According to a technical guidance document published by the State Department, persons born on planes within 12 miles of the United States' territorial waters are eligible for U.S. citizenship at birth.
Taiwanese police, Shanghaist and other local news outlets reported, said Jian has since been deported by U.S. immigration authorities and separated from her newborn baby. Upon returning to Taiwan, she supposedly told the local authorities that her daughter had been granted U.S. citizenship and and is now in custody of Alaska state authorities.
A Customs and Border Protection official declined to confirm the reports to Mashable, saying the agency was prohibited "from providing information regarding individual travelers."
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