A US Army staff sergeant is fighting to stop his wife's deportation after ICE agents detained her on the same military base where he is stationed.
Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank brought his wife, Annie Ramos, to Fort Polk, Louisiana, so she could process her green card along with other military benefits through Blank, The New York Times reported. Ramos, a Honduran immigrant who was brought to the United States as a young child, has a deportation order dating back to 2005 when she was less than two years old.
The couple had just arrived at Fort Polk on Monday, eager to begin life together as newlyweds, when ICE took her into custody within hours of their arrival. 'I never imagined that trying to do the right thing would lead to her being taken away from me,' Blank told AP News. 'What was supposed to be the happiest week of our lives has turned into one of the hardest.'
Newlyweds' Military Benefits Upended by Policy Shift
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program protected eligible undocumented immigrant children from deportation as part of US immigration policy. Ramos filed to receive that in 2020, but her application remains pending amid legal pushback to the Obama-era initiative.
The mishap has now upended the Blank's preparations for a future deployment. 'Our plan was to drive over, bring her to the office to get her military ID and activate her military spouse benefits,' he 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 admitted. 'We were doing everything the right way.' In April, the Department of Homeland Security scrapped a 2022 policy that gave special consideration to immigrants who were immediate family members of military personnel.
The new policy asserts that 'military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating US immigration laws.'
Policy Reversal Bad for Morale, Says Legal Expert
Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert, said Blank's situation isn't only absurd, it also sets a precedent that demoralises the troops. 'It doesn't make any sense — they're going to get arrested for following the law? That's stupid,' she stated. 'It's bad for morale, it disrupts the soldiers' readiness.'
Ramos is a Sunday school teacher and a biochemistry major. Blank's mother, Jen Rickling, says ICE unfairly detained her daughter-in-law. '[She] loves my son with her whole heart,' Rickling appealed. 'We absolutely adore her. I believe in this country. And I believe we can do better than this — for Annie, for other military families, and for the values we hold dear.'
New Immigration Policy 'Sends a Really Bad Message'
The new immigration policy has similarly disrupted other military families, according to Lydiah Owiti-Otienoh, head of the advocacy group Foreign-Born Military Spouse Network. 'It just sends a really bad message — we don't care about you, about your spouses, anything you are doing,' she said. 'If military families are not stable, national security is not stable.'
Last September, over 60 Congressional members warned the DHS and the Department of Defence that any arrest similar to Ramos' case is 'betraying its promises to service members who play a key role in protecting U.S. national security.' The Pentagon declined AP News' request for comment.
