A Maryland woman has been released and reunited with her family after spending 25 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody – despite her attorneys saying documentation showed she was born in the US and therefore is a citizen.
Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales and her legal team maintain she was born in the US and possess records supporting that claim. ICE, however, had disputed this, asserting she is a Mexican citizen who entered the US unlawfully.
According to Díaz Morales, ICE agents detained her near her home on 14 December while her family watched. She told the DC, Maryland and Virginia news outlet WRC-TV that she attempted to explain she was born in Maryland – but said authorities did not accept her explanation. She added that her faith and the hope of reuniting with her family helped her endure the detention.
Díaz Morales said she lived in Mexico starting at age seven and returned to the US more than a year and a half ago. She believes confusion arose because she used her mother’s last name while living in Mexico, whereas US records list both her father’s and mother’s last names.
Four days after her arrest, a Maryland federal district court judge issued an order preventing the government from deporting her while the court reviewed a petition filed by her attorneys challenging her detention.
One of her lawyers, Victoria Slatton, told the Washington Post that the government has not dismissed the case against Díaz Morales, meaning deportation proceedings could still move forward despite her release. But Slatton said she remains confident that her client’s citizenship has been proven.
“She is a US citizen,” Slatton told the Post. “She was born here. I think that we’ve presented more than enough evidence, but we will continue to fight it until every single court accepts and acknowledges it.”
Her attorneys say that Díaz Morales entered the US to escape cartel violence in 2023 without proper paperwork and was mistakenly processed as an immigrant, placing her into deportation proceedings. They say that classification was an error.
The legal team said they submitted her US birth certificate along with additional documents they say establish her citizenship – but those materials were still insufficient to secure her release from ICE custody.
“In my years now of being an immigration attorney, I have never had to go this far for a case,” attorney Zachary Pérez, who also represents Díaz Morales, told WRC-TV. “What we were finally able to get and what we worked on getting was a lengthy affidavit from a medical professional, a doctor who described why the birth certificate was authentic.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “Dulce Consuelo Madrigal Diaz is NOT a US citizen – she is an illegal alien from Mexico. She did NOT provide a valid US birth certificate or any evidence in support of her claim that she is a US citizen.
“On December 14, ICE arrested this illegal alien in Baltimore, Maryland. On October 20, 2023, when CBP encountered her near Lukeville, Arizona, Madrigal-Diaz claimed she was a citizen of Mexico and was born on October 18, 2003,” the statement added.
Díaz Morales told WRC-TV that she holds dual citizenship with Mexico and is in the process of applying for a US passport. She also said she has an upcoming check-in with immigration officials and will attend it alongside her legal team.
The issue of ICE targeting US citizens has been thrown into the international spotlight after a federal agent fatally shot a woman during a large-scale immigration enforcement action in Minneapolis. The victim, Renee Nicole Good, was a US citizen and a mother of three.
Good is shown on video saying everything was “fine” and “I’m not mad at you” seconds before an on-duty ICE agent fired at her as she drove away.
