A Wisconsin man who voted for President Donald Trump is devastated after his Peruvian wife was detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement.
Newlyweds Bradley Bartell and Camila Muñoz were on their way home after honeymooning in Puerto Rico last month when they were pulled aside by an immigration agent at the airport.
Muñoz was in the process of applying for a green card after her original visa expired, USA Today reported. When asked by the agent at the airport whether she was an American citizen, she was taken into custody and is being held in a private immigration facility in Louisiana.
“I knew they were cracking down. I guess I didn’t know how it was going down.” Bartell, an American citizen, told the outlet:
The couple, who live in the small city of Wisconsin Dells, reasoned that because Muñoz’s green card application was ongoing, she paid all her taxes and does not have a criminal record, they would not be caught up in the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. She has been in the U.S. since 2019, working legally on a W-2 visa until it expired, according to the outlet.
“They know who she is and where she came from,” Bartell told the outlet. “They need to get the vetting done and not keep these people locked up. It doesn’t make any sense.”
It took Bartell almost a week to track down his wife, and the two have recently spoken on the phone.
“Emotionally, I'm concerned for her,” Bartell said. “It can't be easy being trapped in a room with 100 other people. They don't have anything in there. It's just so wasteful.”
All the money the couple had been saving to buy a new home for their life together has been spent on legal fees, Bartell added, and he has launched a GoFundMe page with a target of $30,000. “My wife was detained at the end of our belated honeymoon while we were returning through the airport,” Bartell wrote. “This money will be used for legal support and the bond money for my wife.”
He said that on top of legal fees, bond could run “upwards” of $10,000.
The Independent has contacted Immigration Customs and Enforcement for comment.
Overstaying a visa is not considered a criminal offense but is an administrative violation of the law. The Trump White House has characterized all illegal migrants as “criminals” even though immigration law is considered a civil matter. “If an individual is overstaying their visa, they are therefore an illegal immigrant residing in this country, and they are subject to deportation,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in January.
Overstaying a visa can result in a 10-year ban from returning to the U.S. But if the immigrant’s spouse is a U.S. citizen, it can be lawfully forgiven under a “waiver of unlawful presence.”
Attorneys and advocates warn that anyone who isn’t a legal permanent resident or U.S. citizen is now at risk under the Trump administration.
“ICE is really widening the net in a really chilling way in terms of who they are going after," Jesse Franzblau, senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the outlet. “People who generally don’t fit the profile of who they picked up before are being picked up now.”
It comes as the Trump administration also deported an Ivy League doctor specializing in kidney medicine on a H1-B visa. Rasha Alawieh was deported to Lebanon over the weekend despite a court order ruling that she must stay in Massachusetts for 48 hours.
Over the weekend, the White House announced hundreds of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang had been deported after a federal judge temporarily blocked the deportations.
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