CUSTOMS TODAY REPORT
ANTALYA: A nine-year-old girl was waived through Turkish customs with a fake passport – identifying her as a Unicorn. Emily Harris’s parents were stunned when officials stamped the ID their daughter had made especially for her toy unicorn Lily.
The mix-up happened after mum Nicky accidentally handed over the wrong passport at a control stand in Antalya. But border staff failed to realise the “ID” – complete with gold teddy bears on the front – was not real and granted the unicorn access to the country.
Nicky, 43, from Cwmbran, South Wales, said: “I didn’t realise until I was putting the passports away. There was a moment of panic when I thought someone would come chasing after us, but nothing. The passport doesn’t even look real — it’s got gold teddy bears on the front and was a completely different size from mine and my husband, Allen’s. The man even asked Emily how old she was, and she told him nine, before he stamped it.”
It was only when they got outside that Nicky realised that instead of handing in Emily’s passport, she had shown her daughter’s passport for the unicorn. She said: “The picture ID wasn’t even of Emily, it was of a pink unicorn. And to make it worse, the unicorn wasn’t even on holiday with us. We saw the funny side, and laughed at the fact that the officer had even stamped the passport. But at the same time, it’s a worry to any parent, how easy it would be to smuggle a child through customs and into another country.”
