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A 22-year-old woman, married to a U.S. Army staff sergeant, has been freed from federal detention after facing deportation, according to various reports.
Annie Ramos was released from an immigration detention center on Tuesday, following a five-day detention. The New York Times, which initially reported her arrest last Thursday, stated that she has been fitted with an ankle monitor and is required to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) weekly.
Ramos, a Honduran national who arrived in the U.S. as a young child, was taken into custody on April 2 at Fort Polk, Louisiana. She had accompanied her husband, Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, to the military base to complete the paperwork necessary for registering as a military spouse, a step towards obtaining her green card. The couple had tied the knot in March.
Her arrest was based on a final deportation order dating back to April 2005, when she was less than two years old.
“All I have ever wanted is to live with dignity in the country I have called home since I was a baby,” Ramos expressed in a statement to The Associated Press following her release. “I want to finish my degree, continue my education, and serve my community — just as my husband serves our country with honor.”
The AP reported earlier that Ramos applied to receive Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2020, but her application was in “limbo” due to ongoing legal challenges to the program.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told The Hill that Ramos “was issued a final order of removal by a judge” and that the Trump administration “is not going to ignore the rule of law.”
DHS scrapped a 2022 policy last April that considered an immediate family member’s military service to be a “significant mitigating factor” when deciding whether to take civil immigration enforcement action, according to the AP. It came as the agency began pursuing a sweeping immigration crackdown aimed at executing on President Trump’s campaign promise for mass deportations.
The new DHS policy states that “military service alone does not automatically exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”