Therese Patricia Okoumou Facts: 4th Of July Statue Of Liberty Climber Arrested

The woman who tried to climb the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July has been identified by the police.

Her name is Therese Patricia Okoumou and she is a 44-year-old immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She currently lives in Staten Island, New York.

She was taken into custody after a three-hour-long standoff with the police, during which she refused to come down from robes of Lady Liberty, which she scaled in order to protest the separation of children from their immigrant parents at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Officer Brian Glacken said in a news conference Wednesday that 16 officers were involved in the high-risk rescue mission, as they continued to convince Okoumou to climb down from the statue.

"At first, she wasn't friendly with us, but we took the time to get a rapport with her so that took a while," said Glacken, CNN reported. "She just kind of mentioned the kids in Texas. I guess the whole debate that's going on about that. In the beginning, she threatened to push us off, push the ladder off, but we stayed with her.”

The officers had to get ropes and climbing gear in order to reach her. After reaching her, the officer secured her with a harness and ropes in order to bring her to the base of the statue. She was then escorted to the other side of the base where a ladder was propped up for the descent.

Glacken said that Okoumou eventually apologized to the officers for the trouble she caused by refusing to come down.

Here are a few facts on Okoumou:

She is affiliated with Rise and Resist — a New York-based protest group which organized a banner saying “Abolish ICE” to be draped over a railing around the base of the Lady Liberty statue on Wednesday. Jay W. Walker, an organizer and board member of Rise and Resist, told the New York Post that although Okoumou had helped them plan the banner demonstration, the group had no clue that she planned to scale the statue.

“She didn’t tell any of us about this plan,” he said. “We were all really shocked. We were all really taken back. At first, we didn’t realize it was our fellow member. It wasn’t until we were able to see close up photos of her that we realized it was her.”

Immediately following her arrest, the protest group tried to distance itself from her, but later admitted that she was one of their members. Some of the people in the group described Okoumou as a complete “bad ass.”

“She’s very dedicated to the resistance generally, but specifically to the issues surrounding immigration and the treatment immigrants have been receiving from ICE and Customs and Border Control,” Walker said. “She’s been an active member for about four and five months.”

Okoumou has a history of raking up legal trouble. In 2013, she disrupted a demonstration at the Department of Labor building on Varick Street, New York. She was arrested and charged with obstructing governmental administration, unlawful assembly and trespassing.

Prior to that, the Department of Sanitation slapped Okoumou with $4,500 in fines in 2011, after she illegally posted ads for her services as a personal trainer in the form of fliers on Manhattan utility poles.

Before her job as a personal trainer, Okoumou used to work for a social services agency on Staten Island. In 2005, she filed a lawsuit against the agency with New York City Commission on Human Rights, accusing her employers of treating her “in a demeaning manner” due to her skin color. She further added that she was warned that she would be fired “for complaining of discrimination.” It was not immediately clear why her lawsuit was thrown out by the court.