Elizabeth Valdez woke up to a phone call one night back in April.
It was a Cameron County Sheriff's Department deputy telling her that her son had been taken into their satellite office in Harlingen for a curfew violation.
They told her that she needed to go pick him up.
The Harlingen mother of six had just taken her bipolar and schizophrenia medication, so she couldn't drive there.
"Since I live right next to it, we went walking, the deputy told me I didn't even need to go in," Valdez recalled. "He said as soon as you get here, call your son and we will send him out."
Wearing her pajamas, Elizabeth actually had to enter the office to get her son.
She was then asked for an ID, which she did not take since she claims she wasn't told to do so.
That's when the focus turned from the teenager to her.
"I told my son, 'Let's go,' and they grabbed me and threw me against the wall," Valdez recalled.
Elizabeth said in the commotion of trying to figure out why it was happening, she did admittedly resist being put into handcuffs.
But claims she never hit anyone.
She was taken to the Cameron County jail and booked on several charges, including resisting arrest and attempted assault of a public servant.
Valdez admits to having been in trouble with the law in the past but maintains that what happened that night behind this door did not warrant a month behind bars.
The Harlingen mother got out of jail last week where seven of the 10 charges against her were dropped.
Now, she and her family have contancted an attorney and are looking at filing a lawsuit against the sheriff's department for wrongful imprisonment.
Valdez said surveillance video inside the Harlingen office will corroborate her story.
Action 4 News asked the sheriff's department for that video.
Chief Deputy Gus Reyna said Valdez was was interfering with the arrest of her son.
"She had an outstanding warrant," Reyna said. "She had an aggravated assault charge pending. She refused to identify herself and began trying to assault some of the deputies at the harlingen office. There is no video because it happened inside the office."
Valdez said the oustanding warrant was the fault of her old attorney -- 404th State District Judge Abel Limas, who was pleaded guilty earlier this year in federal corruption case.
The Harlingen mother said deputies treated her the way they did because of her appearance, not because of what happened that night.
Valdez her just wants the alleged wrongs against her, corrected.
"I have tattoos but I'm a mother, a sister, an aunt, a wife," she said.
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