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‘Tan Mom’ claims ICE agents nearly dragged her away after making one shocking assumption
The woman dubbed the "tan mom" has claimed that she was nearly dragged away by ICE agents.
Patricia Krentcil is a New Jersey woman whose deeply bronzed complexion, caused by her regular visits to tanning salons, earned her national headlines.
In a recent episode of her Light. Tan. Up. with Tan Mom & Adam Barta podcast, she shared that immigration officers approached her when she left a restaurant with her friends and began asking her if she was a US citizen.
"Back to the ICE issue, I was at a restaurant with my girlfriends, and I walked out with my friends, as we were done eating, and the ICE people stopped me," Krentcil said. "They asked me, 'Am I an American citizen?' and I’m, like, 'yes', you know. It blew my mind."
Krentcil said she was stopped because of her tanned skin
The mom said because she was "so tanned," they were allegedly about to handcuff her and take her away "[to] God knows where because once you get in those trucks, you don't know where you're going anymore."
She also shared that even though she was "scared" by the "terrifying" incident, she "held [her] own" and managed to get out of it.
She believes she was stopped because of her appearance and criticized President Donald Trump for "supporting all this nonsense".
'Tan Mom' has had a previous run-in with the law over tanning
Back in 2013, Krentcil was arrested after her daughter, who was five at the time, showed up in school with a "pretty severe sunburn," per CBS News.
According to NBC News, Krentcil said her trips to the tanning salon were errands and that she took her child with her, but insisted the booth lights were never exposed to the girl.
"It's like taking your daughter to go food shopping," she said. "There's tons of moms that bring their children in... I tan, she doesn't tan. I'm in the booth, she's in the room. That's all there is to it."
As it's against the law in New Jersey for any child under 14 years old to use an artificial tanning booth, the mom was charged with child endangerment.
However, a grand jury refused to indict her on those charges. Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Gina Iosim said: "We presented all the available evidence in the case to the grand jury, both the state’s evidence and the defense’s evidence. The grand jurors voted not to indict Mrs. Krentcil. We respect their decision."
Krentcill opened up about the ordeal at the time, saying: "That nurse made the worst mistake of her life. I don't think dollars can put something on it, for what they did to us, emotionally. That school is pathetic. It was definitely a set up, I don't care what anyone says."
She also blasted at her critics in an interview with TMZ: "I'm innocent and it's proven... I would never - never - put my daughter in a tanning booth. We go out shopping. That's what we do... Any mother that makes an accusation about me is not a mother, because I'm a great mother and I would never do that to my child."
When a reporter asked her if she felt she was a target of a witch hunt, she responded: "Yes. Yes. There's somebody out there on my whole life that doesn't like me because they're jealous, they're fat and they're ugly."