Outrage Over How ICE Tricked Newlyweds Speaks to 'Broader Pattern' Under Trump Agenda

Congresswoman Judy Chu was among many expressing anger on Tuesday evening over the Trump administration's detention of Barbara Gomes Marques, a film director who was detained by immigration agents last month after attending a "properly scheduled" meeting regarding her green card and is now facing the "very real possibility" of deportation.

Marques' experience, said Chu (D-Calif.), "reflects a broader pattern under [President Donald] Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel."

Chu spoke out on the case after Marques' husband, Tucker May, brought attention to their experience on social media.

The couple, who was married just last year, went to the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles in September to meet with immigration officers regarding Marques' green card. She arrived in the US on a tourist visa seven years ago and has worked as a film director. She has no criminal record. As the libertarian CATO Institute reported in June, 65% of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first months of Trump's second term have no criminal convictions, despite the administration's repeated claims that its mass deportation and detention operation is aimed at cracking down on violent criminals.

May and Marques were accompanied by their lawyer at the meeting, which they believed was a step toward Marques becoming a US citizen and were told was "successful." But after the meeting, an agent told the couple Marques needed to accompany them down a hallway to make a copy of her passport due to a broken copier in the office.

"Once separated from her legal counsel, she was arrested," wrote May on a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for the couple's legal fees.

"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself."

ICE agents told the couple they were detaining Marques due to a missed court date in 2019; Marques and May have said they did not receive a letter about the court date and were not informed about it until she was detained.

May told reporters that ICE agents "put her in hand shackles and in leg shackles, and around the waist as well, like she's some hardened criminal. She had tears streaming down her face, and she told me one of the ICE agents pulled out his cellphone, laughing, and took a selfie."

May wrote that "the officer used the excuse of a broken copier to trick her into walking away from her lawyer," making it possible for his wife to be taken the Adelanto ICE Processing Center nearly 100 miles away. From there, Marques was sent to a facility in Arizona, and then to a "staging facility" in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Friends of the couple reported on their GoFundMe page Tuesday that a court had "officially acknowledged a motion to reopen Barbara’s case," stopping ICE from deporting her while a judge reviews the case. But the couple's lawyer, Marcelo Gondim, told CBS News he believes Louisiana has been planned as Marques' last stop before being deported.

"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself," said Gondim, who filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the government from deporting Marques. "Knowing that she's married to a US citizen, she has a legal way to become a permanent resident in a matter of months, if they just gave her a chance to find her paperwork."

Chu said she was "demanding that ICE follow the law" and emphasized that "unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique."

As Common Dreams reported last week, an Ecuadorian woman, Monica Moreta-Galarza, was thrown to the ground by an immigration agent at a courthouse in New York City as she pleaded with him not to arrest her husband, who had attended a court hearing as part of the family's legal application for asylum. The agent who attacked Moreta-Galarza was briefly suspended, but returned to work days later.

In July, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) filed a class action lawsuit accusing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) of "ongoing collusion" in which the agencies have directed government attorneys to request the dismissal of immigrants' legal cases at court hearings they were ordered to attend. Once their cases have been dismissed, immigrants have been arrested and detained by ICE agents waiting at courthouses.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia University student organizer and green-card holder, was also arrested by masked federal agents earlier this year after arriving at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had been directed to go to complete his US citizenship application.

"People scheduled for hearings at immigration courts across the country continue to feel as though as they are walking into a trap set by the Trump administration," said the NIJC last week. "We must fight to save due process and keep telling these stories."

Marques' friends and family called on the public to send "an absolute storm of calls and emails" to lawmakers in Louisiana, demanding that her deportation be halted.

"The number of people being grabbed at immigration check-ins or green-card hearings is despicable," said one writer this week. "They’re following the process. They’re doing everything the right way. Yet they’re being disappeared. Barbara Marques: Say her name. Demand accountability. Help bring her home."