new orleans — A US Army sergeant is trying to stop his wife’s deportation after she was detained inside a Louisiana military base where the couple planned to live together just days after their wedding.
Efforts to free the soldier’s wife, who was born in Honduras and remains in a federal immigration detention center on Monday, sparked backlash from military family advocates who called the detention demoralizing in the country. Wartime She warned that deporting spouses could undermine the recruitment process.
Sgt. Matthew Blank said he brought his wife, Annie Ramos, 22, to his base in Fort Polk, Louisiana, last Thursday so she could begin the process of obtaining military benefits and take steps toward obtaining a green card. The couple married in March.
Federal immigration agents arrested Ramos as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, which legal experts say dispensed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s practice of leniency toward families of military personnel.
“I never imagined that trying to do the right thing would turn her away from me,” Blank, 23, said in a statement to the Associated Press. “What was supposed to be the happiest week of our lives turned into one of the most difficult weeks.”
Ramos was arrested Reported for the first time By The New York Times.
Ramos entered the United States in 2005, when she was less than two years old. That same year, her family failed to show up for an immigration hearing, prompting a judge to issue a final order of deportation, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“She has no legal status to be in this country,” the Department of Homeland Security said in an email statement. “This administration will not ignore the rule of law.”
In 2020, Ramos applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivalsalso known as DACA, but her husband says her application has remained “in limbo” amid legal battles to end the Obama-era program.
Last April, the Department of Homeland Security removed A Politics 2022 Which deemed an immediate family member’s military service a “significant mitigating factor” in deciding whether or not to pursue immigration enforcement. Management New policy “Military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws,” it states.
Before the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, the Department of Homeland Security generally allowed spouses of active-duty military personnel to obtain legal status through policies such as established parole and deferred action promoted by military recruiters, according to Margaret Stock, an expert on military immigration law.
Stock said it would have been easy to solve Ramos’ case in the past, but instead the Department of Homeland Security now appears to be focusing on detaining military family members whenever the opportunity arises — including when they, like Ramos, are trying to apply for legal status.
“This doesn’t make sense. Are they going to get arrested for following the law? This is stupid,” Stock said. “It’s bad for morale. It disrupts soldiers’ readiness.”
In September, more than 60 members of Congress wrote to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense warning against this. Detention of military personnel and family members of veterans She was “betraying her promises to service members who play a key role in protecting America’s national security.”
The Pentagon declined to comment.
Lydia Awiti Otinoh, who runs an advocacy group called the Foreign-Born Military Spouses Network, said she has seen an increase in cases in which military families’ lives have been upended by tightening immigration restrictions. She believes the federal government is undermining its own interests by trying to deport military spouses.
“It sends a very bad message – we don’t care about you, your husbands, or anything you do,” Awiti Otinoh said. “If military families are not stable, national security is not stable.”
Blank’s mother, Jane Reckling, told the AP in a statement that her daughter-in-law, a Sunday school teacher and biochemistry major, was everything she could have hoped for — someone who “loves my son with all her heart.”
“We absolutely adore her,” Reckling said. “I believe in this country. I believe we can do better than this — for Annie, for other military families, and for the values we hold dear.”
Blank says he was eager to start building a life with Ramos on base while serving his country.
“I want my wife home,” Blank said. “And I won’t stop fighting until you’re back where you belong, by my side.”
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Brock is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America It is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.