A New York Marriage is Torn Apart By ICE

Matthew and Allan Marrero’s love story began with a like. 

Allan was scrolling Instagram when he joined a live feed of Matthew and a mutual friend discussing music. Soon after, Matthew, a singer-songwriter, started to notice a stranger was liking and commenting on his feed. 

“He’s the hottest man I’ve ever met,” Matthew thought. “I’m like, this can’t be real.”

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Eventually, Matthew reached out. DMs turned to texts, then calls and then a surprise date at the coffee shop across the street from Matthew’s Bed-Stuy apartment. 

“By the week before Valentine’s Day, I was writing in my journal like, this is going to be my husband someday,” Matthew said.

Over two years, two dogs and many nights dancing to Beyonce and Mariah Carey later, they were married and in love. 

Allan was a citizen of the Cayman Islands. So, as many mixed-status couples before them have done, they eventually applied for a green card through marriage. To prepare, the couple spent hours meticulously crafting and organizing photos of their years-long love story into a thick, 3-inch binder.

Last Monday, they felt optimistic and ready to prove they had a bonafide marriage when they walked into 26 Federal Plaza for their interview with an immigration officer. 

They were accompanied by their pastor Amanda Hambrick — she was not allowed to join them, but instead watched them walk back into the offices.

“Next thing I hear, Matthew is hyperventilating, running down the hallway, screaming and crying ‘Amanda, Amanda they took him!’” Hambrick said.

The Marreros are one of a growing number of U.S. citizen and immigrant couples to be torn apart at their interview for a marriage-based green card. 

According to a brief by The American Immigration Lawyers Association, there has been a rising number of detentions of non-citizen relatives of U.S. citizens at green card interviews, even in situations where the person may be eligible to permanent residency in the United States.

In New York City, such arrests have been less common, but since Allan had a removal order — unbeknownst to him — he was more vulnerable in a climate where USCIS interviews have turned into a “hunting ground,” explained Hasan Shafiqullah of the Legal Aid Society. Under any previous administration, he likely could have been sent home to fix his status before returning, agreed Shafiqullah and the Marreros’ team at Make the Road. 

Matthew told PasarModern.comthat his husband’s arrest felt unfair and “cruel,” and that it’s not true that the administration is arresting “the worst of the worst.”

“Our love does not deserve this. And being [in immigration detention] with all of those other people visiting their family, they don’t deserve it either. It’s disgusting,” said Matthew. 

Neither Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who arrested Allan, nor U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who interviewed the couple, responded immediately to a request for comment on Allan’s case.

Allan, originally from the Cayman Islands, entered the United States in 2013 on a visa and immediately applied for asylum due to fear of persecution as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He has attended immigration court hearings, had a job in the hospitality industry, has paid taxes and has no criminal record, according to his family and legal team. 

Now, he’s detained in Newark’s Delaney Hall Detention Facility, where he’s been struggling to receive his daily medications, and has been called homophobic slurs by other detainees for having painted toenails. 

Since Allan’s arrest last Monday, the couple has been waging a battle, with solidarity from their church community. They are fighting for Allan’s flagging health and safety in detention, to recover his asylum case, and to get him home by Christmas.

“The whole plan was, we get our interview, we’re gonna come home to Connecticut to see the family, celebrate, see Wicked, and celebrate my [deceased] dad’s birthday,” said Matthew. “ All that shattered.“ 

The interview

The couple had been married for roughly two years before deciding to apply for Allan’s green card. Allan and his husband were enjoying being newlyweds. Matthew and Allan duetted pop songs in the apartment. Allan got his first tattoo: a blue and purple heart, the color of the suits they were married in. 

“Sometimes when I come home, he’ll have the music ready, and he’ll grab me, and we’ll start dancing around,” said Matthew. “The puppies are all excited, and we’ll dance around the apartment.”

But Allan had hoped to attend nursing school, and having permanent residency would help with financial aid. So the two scraped together the thousands of dollars needed to apply without a lawyer. 

Besides building their binder, the couple prepared for their appointment by soliciting help and prayers from their church, Middle Church. At 26 Federal Plaza, they also called upon both the memory of Allan’s grandmother who raised him, and Matthew’s recently deceased father, Hambrick said. But things quickly went downhill as soon as they walked down the hallway and through the door to their appointment.

The immigration officer demanded Matthew sit against the wall away from his husband, and started grilling the couple about their relationship. 

“Do you understand that your husband has been ordered by a judge to be removed by this country?” she asked. The officer informed them that he had missed a court date and been ordered removed for doing so. Allan began to cry.

At first, the officer seemed to be ready to cut them some slack, said Matthew, claiming that she could call ICE but wouldn’t — and that they should get in front of an immigration lawyer immediately. The two were both “an emotional wreck” but grateful, he said. 

She later hedged saying that she couldn’t protect them outside her office.

“The thing that has haunted me since this has happened is as we left the office, the lady said to us, ‘Have a great day.’”

They were walked right into the hands of two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Allan was detained on the spot, before being quickly moved to New Jersey.

Also Read: A Family’s Fight to Bring Their Father Home

According to family, friends and his legal team, Allan had not received a notice for his last court date while he was living in a rehabilitation facility. Officers in such cases have discretion, and detention is not always an automatic outcome in such a situation, said Kate Angustia, supervisory police and practice council for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. 

“It seems like they are taking any opportunity to find ways that they would spin as keeping America safe, but it seems also to just be dragging a lot of people into the system that should not be in the system,” said Angustia.

A fight for freedom

ince Allan’s detention, the couple’s community has sprung into action. His family put together a Go-Fund-Me page to raise money for legal, commissary and visitation expenses. 

His church rallied, with one member contacting local elected officials to find the couple a pro-bono lawyer, who filed to reopen his case — something which saved him from automatic deportation while the decision is pending. 

On Tuesday, Make the Road released a petition demanding Allan’s release. 

Meanwhile, Allan is struggling to receive proper and timely medication, such as his antidepressants. Detention doctors are trying to wean him off some drugs that his own doctors on the outside have deemed necessary for his mental health. And because of timing, Allan has also had to choose between receiving his medications or a meal or receiving visitors, said Matthew.

Allan has received money to call his family and friends, but as of Monday, he had not received the commissary items he had ordered such as towels and socks to cover up his painted toes. With each visit, Matthew says, Allan’s disposition has turned darker.

On Sunday’s visit, Allan told Matthew that a fight broke out in his room that Allan wasn’t involved in, but there was blood spilt and some detainees were put on lockdown. 

“He’s slowly starting to crack a little bit,” said Matthew, “They are still messing with his medication.” 

The couple’s lawyer, Alexandra Rizio, told PasarModern.comthat she believes that Allan is eligible for a green card. However, she has been trying to prepare the couple to withstand several weeks of “unjust” detention as they wait for a decision from the judge and then hopefully try to adjust his legal status.

To Matthew, the goal is simple: “I just want so badly to get my husband home. I hope, I pray, that he’ll be able to get out before the holidays.”