Teen Jailed In Caymans For Breaking COVID Restrictions Wants Trump To Intervene

The family of an 18-year-old American college student is turning to President Trump for help after she earned a four-month prison sentence for breaking COVID-19 quarantine rules to attend her boyfriend’s jet-ski competition.

In late November, Skylar Mack, a pre-med student at Mercer University in Georgia, went to the Cayman Islands to see her boyfriend Vanjae Ramgeet compete. Despite all visitors needing to wait in isolation for 14 days, she arrived only two days before the event.

On the day of the competition, she slipped out of her tracking device and went to join the crowds. Ramgeet took first place, but organizers were alerted to her presence and both of them were arrested.

“This was as flagrant a breach as could be imagined,” Justice Roger Chapple said. “It was born of selfishness and arrogance.”

Mack and Ramgeet were sentenced to 40 hours of community services and fined $3,100 after pleading guilty to breaking quarantine rules. The sentence was increased to four months in prison after prosecutors appealed the decision.

Her family, however, says the sentence is too harsh and is appealing to whoever they can to get her freed. A hearing before a panel of judges has been set for Tuesday.

Mack’s grandmother Jeanne Mack went on NBC's "Today" show Monday to plead her case to the public and more specifically to the president.

“She cries, she wants to come home,” she said. “She knows she made a mistake. She owns up to that, but she’s pretty hysterical right now.”

Skylar Mack’s family has appealed to Trump directly. Last week they received a reply to a letter that the case had been forwarded to “the appropriate federal agency.”

Commentators online were generally unsympathetic to Mack’s efforts to avoid the consequences of her fun in the sun, viewing it as an extension of American entitlement.