A U.S. Army staff sergeant who reported for duty at a military base in Louisiana with his new bride last week was shocked to see her arrested by ICE agents shortly after their arrival.
Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, 23, had driven from Houston, Texas, to Fort Polk with his wife Annie Ramos, 22, and his parents in time for a 2 p.m. registration appointment on Thursday April 2.
Ramos is an undocumented migrant who was brought to the U.S. by her parents when she was a toddler and had understood that she would receive a green card through her marriage, which would entitle her to apply for citizenship within three years of its receipt, as is customary under U.S. immigration law.
The group duly signed in at the base’s visitors’ center as instructed and presented their documentation, which included Blank’s military ID, their marriage license, and Ramos’s Honduran passport.
But rather than be ushered into the facility’s benefits office, as they were expecting, ICE agents descended, taking Ramos into custody in handcuffs before having her transported to a detention center in nearby Basile for deportation as the family wept in disbelief.
“Our plan was to drive over, bring her to the office to get her military ID and activate her military spouse benefits,” Blank told The New York Times. “She was going to move in after the Easter weekend. Instead, she got ripped away from me.”
“I knew she didn’t have status,” he added, saying the couple had retained an immigration lawyer and were attempting to operate by the book. “We were doing everything the right way.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Ramos “has no legal status to be in this country and was issued a final order of removal by a judge,” alluding to a court order issued in absentia in 2005 that insisted the then-22-month-old infant must be returned to Honduras.
“This administration is not going to ignore the rule of law,” it added.
Ramos is a Sunday school teacher and college student who was a few months away from completing a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, according to the Times.
The couple met last year via a dating app, were engaged on New Year’s Day, and married in Houston last month, with 60 guests at their reception at which a Mariachi band performed and fried chicken and mashed potato was served.
“I grew up here like any American,” Ramos told the newspaper via phone from the detention center. “This is all I know. My husband and family are here.”
Blank, who has previously been deployed to the Middle East and Europe, has vowed to do everything he can to secure his wife’s freedom and said he has the support of his chain of command.
“We are going to fight with everything I have,” he said. “She is going to move in with me. We will start a family… I am going to be with her and serve my country.”
A GoFundMe campaign set up by the family to raise money for Ramos’s costly legal fees had raised more than $8,000 towards its $12,000 target at the time of writing.
Margaret Stock, author of the book Immigration Law and the Military, told the Times the couple’s marital situation was “very common.”
“Prior to the Trump administration creating a mass deportation policy, somebody like her would not have been detained,’’ she said.
“It’s fundamentally harmful to national security to be doing this to members of the military, particularly while there is a war going on. This is a major crisis for this soldier. His mind can’t be on the job.”
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