The wife of a US soldier was released on Tuesday from a federal immigration detention facility where she had spent nearly a week after being taken into custody on a Louisiana military base.
The detention of 22-year-old Annie Ramos, the Honduran born-wife of a US Army staff sergeant preparing to deploy, prompted public backlash from critics of the White House’s mass deportation campaign who warned it demoralized troops during an ongoing war.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ramos’ mother-in-law, Jen Rickling, confirmed her release.
Photo: Jen Rickling via AP
Ramos, who last month married Staff Sergeant Matthew Blank, had been detained by federal immigration agents while attempting to register at his base to receive military benefits and ultimately obtain a green card. She had lived in the country since before she was two years old.
DHS said that Ramos had been ordered removed by a federal immigration judge in 2005 after her family had failed to appear for a hearing.
Ramos and her husband said she has been attempting to gain legal status, including by applying for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2020, although her application remained stalled amid legal battles to eliminate the program.
“All I have ever wanted is to live with dignity in the country I have called home since I was a baby,” Ramos said in a statement after her release. “I want to finish my degree, continue my education, and serve my community — just as my husband serves our country with honor.”
DHS said that Ramos had been released with a GPS monitor “while she undergoes further removal proceedings.”
The Trump administration has scrapped policies of immigration enforcement leniency toward the family members of military personnel and veterans, even as the military has promoted the protection of US soldiers’ family members from deportation as a recruiting incentive.
In another high-profile case, US attorneys told a federal judge that DHS still intends to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, despite a new agreement with Costa Rica to accept deportees who cannot legally be returned to their home countries.
The Salvadoran national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by DHS officials.
US District Judge Paula Xinis, of Maryland, previously barred US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting him or detaining him.
She has written that the agency has no viable plan to actually deport Abrego Garcia, referring in February to “one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success.”
At the Tuesday hearing in Xinis’ court, US Department of Justice attorney Ernesto Molina suggested that Abrego Garcia could “remove himself” to Costa Rica, but Xinis pointed out that the department is prosecuting him in Tennessee on human smuggling charges.
She called it a “fantasy” to say that he can remove himself anywhere while the criminal case is pending.
Xinis set a schedule for a briefing on the matter and scheduled a new hearing for April 28.
Abrego Garcia, 30, has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the US illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. By mistake, he was deported there anyway in last year.
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