Man demands answers after wife was detained at scheduled green card meeting
By Laurie Perez
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LOS ANGELES (KCAL, KCBS) — A man from Pasadena is speaking out and asking for help after his wife was detained by federal agents at the end of a scheduled green card hearing in downtown Los Angeles in early September.
Tucker May says that his wife, Barbara Gomes Marques, 38, was on her way to becoming a U.S. citizen when they headed to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building almost two weeks ago. He says that at the end of her meeting for her green card, someone asked his wife to accompany them down a hallway to make a copy of her passport, which they thought was the next step in her gaining citizenship after they were married last year.
Now, he believes it was a trick to get the two separated before she was taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
“Going home without her that night was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” May said. “She put so much effort into looking nice, because she was excited to take a step toward becoming an American, and I had to go home, and I had to put away the shoes that they took off her feet and gave to me in a plastic bag.”
He says that Marques is a documentarian without a criminal record who came to the U.S. on a tourist visa seven years ago.
“They 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 cell phone, laughing, and took a selfie,” May said.
CBS News Los Angeles has reached out to both ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for further information on the incident. May said that they told his wife she was arrested for missing a court date regarding her status in 2019, something he says they were completely unaware of.
Marcelo Gondim is an immigration attorney who is helping represent the couple. He says that Marques spent a week at the Adelanto ICE Facility in Adelanto, CA, before she was transported to a different detention center in Arizona. She is set for transport to Louisiana, which he believes is her last stop before deportation. He claims that this is a tactic now being used to convolute the process.
“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,” Gondim said. “Knowing that she’s married to a U.S. 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.”
Gondim said that they’ve filed an emergency application for a temporary restraining order to stop her from being moved to a new detention center or deported.
While they wait to hear back from a judge, May is desperately calling for help, something he says that even goes above bringing his wife back.
“I’m a man trying to get his wife back home, and we need someone with more power than I have to help,” May said. “If we allow these types of things to happen to our most vulnerable people, it’s only a matter of time before it could happen to any of us.”
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