Photo credit: Indian Express
Some spouses of US citizens were recently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at what they thought were going to be routine green card interviews.
NBC News reports that there have been several dozen known cases out of San Diego alone. Cases have also been reported in New York City, Cleveland and Utah, according to attorneys and news reports.
Immigration attorneys told NBC News that this marks an “unprecedented” break in decades-long practice policy, and that their clients are panicked they could be detained even when they are eligible to become permanent residents and have no criminal histories.
The detentions are one of the latest tactics in President Donald Trump’s policies targeting legal pathways for immigration and increasing scrutiny of green card applicants.
The administration has said in multiple cases that people were detained because they had fallen out of status by overstaying their visas. However, attorneys have said this has never been an issue, and spouses of US citizens looking to obtain green cards were granted exceptions by Congress. The law says that immediate relatives, such as spouses, of US citizens are eligible for green cards even if they were in an unlawful immigration status at the time they filed to become permanent residents.
Attorneys said the exact number of people affected would be difficult to quantify. Still, all said many spouses of U.S. citizens seeking green cards could fall into the category of overstaying their visas. There are currently at least hundreds of thousands of people who are at some stage of the green card application process, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Service data.
