US soldier trying to halt wife's deportation after she was detained on Louisiana military base

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A U.S. Army staff sergeant is trying to halt his wife's deportation after she was detained inside a Louisiana military base where the couple was planning to live together just days after their wedding.

The effort to remove the soldier's wife, who was born in Honduras and remained in a federal immigration detention center Monday, has drawn backlash from military family advocates who called the detention demoralizing in a time of war and warned that deporting spouses could undermine recruitment.

Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank said he brought his wife, Annie Ramos, 22, to his base in Fort Polk, Louisiana, last Thursday so that she could begin the process to receive military benefits and take steps toward a green card. The couple married in March.

Federal immigration agents detained Ramos as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda, which legal experts say has dispensed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's practice of leniency toward families of military members.

“I never imagined that trying to do the right thing would lead to her being taken away from me,” said Blank, 23, in a statement to The Associated Press. “What was supposed to be the happiest week of our lives has turned into one of the hardest.”

Ramos' detention was first reported by The New York Times.

Ramos entered the U.S. in 2005, when she was younger than 2 years old. That same year, her family failed to appear for an immigration hearing, leading a judge to issue a final order of removal, according to DHS.

“She has no legal status to be in this country,” DHS said in an emailed statement. “This administration is not going to ignore the rule of law.”

In 2020, Ramos applied to receive Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, but her husband says her application has remained “in limbo” amid legal fights to end the Obama-era program.

Last April, DHS eliminated a 2022 policy that considered military service of an immediate family member to be a “significant mitigating factor” in deciding whether or not to pursue immigration enforcement. The administration’s new policy states that “military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”

Prior to the Trump administration's mass deportation push, DHS generally allowed the spouses of active-duty military members to gain legal status through policies like parole in place and deferred action that military recruiters promote, according to Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.

Ramos' case would have been easy to resolve in the past, Stock said, but instead DHS now appears to be focusing on detaining members of military families whenever the opportunity arises — including when, like Ramos, they are attempting to apply for legal status.

“It doesn’t make any sense — they’re going to get arrested for following the law? That's stupid," Stock said. “It's bad for morale, it disrupts the soldiers' readiness.”

In September, more than 60 members of Congress wrote to DHS and the U.S. Department of Defense warning that arrests of military personnel and veteran's family members was “betraying its promises to service members who play a key role in protecting U.S. national security."

The Pentagon declined to comment.

Lydiah Owiti-Otienoh, who runs an advocacy group called the Foreign-Born Military Spouse Network, said she's anecdotally seen an increase in cases where the lives of military families have been upended by tightening immigration restrictions. She believes the federal government is undermining its own interests by attempting to deport military spouses.

“It just sends a really bad message — we don’t care about you, about your spouses, anything you are doing,” Owiti-Otienoh said. “If military families are not stable, national security is not stable.”

Blank’s mother, Jen Rickling, told the AP in a statement that her daughter-in-law, a Sunday school teacher and biochemistry major, had been everything she hoped for — someone who “loves my son with her whole heart.”

“We absolutely adore her,” Rickling said. “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.”

Blank says he had been eager to start building a life and with Ramos on the base while he served his country.

“I want my wife home," Blank said. “And I will not stop fighting until she is back where she belongs, by my side.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.