Immigration and Customs Enforcement handcuffed a newlywed woman and shipped her to detention from a U.S. Army base where she had requested a military ID to allow her to move in with her staff sergeant husband.
Annie Ramos, a 22-year-old college student with no criminal record, was brought to the United States from Honduras as a toddler and has lived almost her entire life in the U.S., The New York Times reported.
Although she is undocumented, she and her husband, Matthew Blank, 23, had hired an immigration attorney to apply for legal permanent residency through marriage, with the green card application set to be filed any day.
When they arrived at Fort Polk, Louisiana, where Blank is stationed, Ramos checked in at the visitor center with her Honduran passport and birth certificate, according to the Times.
When asked whether she had a visa or green card, she explained that her lawyer was filing the application imminently.
An officer from the base’s criminal investigations division was called, followed by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Ramos was told she would be detained, and everyone broke down in tears, Blank told the Times.
She was handcuffed and driven away in a military police vehicle before being sent to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Ramos had been ordered deported in absentia in 2005, when she was 22 months old, because her family failed to appear at an immigration court hearing.
The situation is “very common,” immigration attorney and retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel Margaret Stock told the Times.
Undocumented immigrants who marry U.S. citizens are typically not detained. Even if they have a prior deportation order, they are usually able to adjust their immigration status.
Before President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy, the military would have given Ramos a military ID and told the couple to file their immigration papers, Stock said.
Blank, who was previously deployed to the Middle East and Europe, is scheduled to start training at the end of the month for deployment, presumably in connection with Trump’s war on Iran.
“It’s fundamentally harmful to national security to be doing this to members of the military, particularly while there is a war going on,” Stock told the Times. “This is a major crisis for this soldier. His mind can’t be on the job.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the Times in a statement that Ramos had been arrested “after she attempted to enter a military base” and “has no legal status to be in the country.”
“This administration is not going to ignore the rule of law,” the statement said.
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
Ramos was just months away from earning a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at Arizona State University when she was detained.
Her education was funded by TheDream.US, which provides scholarships for young undocumented immigrants.
In 2020, Ramos applied for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programs, but the first Trump administration halted the program for new applicants, so her application was never processed.
“I grew up like any American,” said Ramos, a devout Christian who teaches Sunday School and played in her high school marching band. “This is all I know. My husband and family are here.”
Her in-laws “adore” her, they told the Times.
The family has set up a GoFundMe to help cover legal costs, including a motion to reopen the deportation order and block her removal.
