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Tag: homeland security official

  • She went to get her green card and now faces deportation. Did the feds trick her?

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    On Sept. 16, Barbara Gomes Marques May and her husband arrived at the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building for what they believed would be the final step in Marques May’s process to obtain her green card.

    The interview process had gone smoothly, Tucker May recalled. But toward the end, a federal immigration official she had met with said he needed Marques May to follow him so he could photocopy her passport, he recalled. She and her husband believed the trip would be brief and they would be able to leave.

    Instead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested Marques May, a 38-year-old Brazilian national who has no criminal record and works as a film director in Los Angeles. She was handcuffed and transferred to the ICE facility in Adelanto in San Bernardino County before being sent to Louisiana. Meanwhile, her husband and her lawyer scrambled to try to stop her deportation.

    On Wednesday, Marques May was scheduled to board a 6 a.m. flight to her home country, but her attorney was able to file a motion to reopen her deportation proceedings and keep her on U.S. soil, at least temporarily. As of Thursday, she had been moved to Arizona and will return to California while her deportation proceedings remain open, her attorney said.

    “It’s very much an ongoing nightmare,” Tucker May said in an interview this week.

    Department of Homeland Security officials did not respond to a request for comment about Marques May’s case.

    According to her attorney, Marcelo Gondim, Marques May arrived in the U.S. in 2018 on a tourist visa. Gondim said she applied for an extension but was denied. She ended up overstaying her visa, he said, and in 2019, the government sent her a notice to appear for a court hearing to begin deportation proceedings.

    But Marques May had moved and had not kept her address up to date with immigration court, and so the letter never reached her, Gondim said. Because she failed to appear, the government issued a removal order against her.

    In April 2025, the couple got married and she began the process to apply for a green card, Gondim said. Under the Biden administration, he said, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would have notified Marques May that there was a removal order issued for her and directed her on how to get it resolved.

    Overstaying a visa is not considered a criminal offense, and penalties are issued if the person leaves the country. In cases involving married couples, Gondim said, there’s an automatic forgiveness for overstaying a visa, relief that Marques May would’ve been eligible for.

    But the Trump administration has instead used courthouses and Citizenship and Immigration Services offices to engage in mass arrests of migrants attending mandated hearings and appointments. Soon, the USCIS will have expanded powers.

    In September, the Department of Homeland Security issued a new directive that will allow the agency — which administers and oversees immigration applications — to enforce immigration law with “special agents.” The order goes into effect Monday.

    “USCIS will have greater capacity to support DHS efforts by handling investigations from start to finish, instead of referring certain cases to Homeland Security Investigation within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the agency said in a statement.

    After Marques May was arrested, May struggled to figure out where federal authorities had sent his wife. Finally, he was able to get in touch with her, and she detailed how, when she was arrested in L.A., she burst into tears, and an ICE agent took a selfie with her, he said.

    During her transfer between detention facilities, she told him, she was subjected to harsh conditions, including how she went without food or water for more than 12 hours and had access to bathrooms with no toilet paper. She was given only bread and water and a couple of times an apple.

    Marques May, who had surgery this year for chronic back problems, was also denied medical treatment for a device she uses to manage her pain, he said. May went public with her arrest more than a week after she was detained, he said, because he had run out of all legal avenues.

    “There is an open disdain being shown by ICE for the basic rule of law for this country,” he said.

    May began posting about her arrest online, garnering hundreds of responses and support. A GoFundMe page had raised more than $50,000 as of Thursday. U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who counts Marques May as one of her constituents, said she was “doing everything possible to prevent her deportation and I’m demanding that ICE follow the law.”

    “Unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique, it reflects a broader pattern under Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel,” she posted on X.

    Gondim said he repeatedly tried to stop her from being transferred to facilities outside California, only to find barriers and delays by ICE officials to getting legal documents for her to sign. From Adelanto, she was transferred to Arizona, then Louisiana.

    The government is not doing anything wrong by complying with the removal order, he said, “but they cannot prevent the person from having access to counsel and be able to present their case to file some form of relief [so they] don’t get unjustly deported.”

    To stop Marques May’s imminent deportation, Gondim filed separate motions to reopen her deportation proceedings and terminate her deportation proceedings. Until a judge rules on the case, Gondim said, ICE cannot deport her. He said he’s hopeful that she will end up being released.

    “Since she has already an approved petition from her U.S. citizen husband, and she has a clear path to filing a new [application] and getting her green card,” he said, an immigration court judge will not be interested in pursuing a case against a person who should be approved for permanent residency by law.

    Until then, May said his wife’s first feature film has been put on hold until she can be released. In 2021, Marques May premiered her short film, “Pretas,” at the Culver Theater for the L.A. Brazilian Film Festival. The film centers on Black women and their experiences dealing with racism and carries a message of creating a more anti-racist society.

    “I love Los Angeles so much,” she said in an interview at the time. “I couldn’t be happier. It was a premiere I wasn’t expecting.”

    It was their shared love of films that bonded the couple, who met on a dating app, May said. They spent a lot of their time together watching movies, sharing popcorn and then discussing what worked and didn’t in the films.

    May says he now thinks about all the immigrants who have not committed any crimes but lack the legal resources to avoid deportation.

    “These are human beings that these terrible things are happening to,” he said. “If anybody reads stories like this, if they think this doesn’t apply to them because they’re not married to an immigrant, I beg those people to consider what they think comes next.”

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    Melissa Gomez

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  • San Bernardino man arrested after he protested immigration officer shooting at his truck

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    Francisco Longoria, a San Bernardino man who was driving his truck when a masked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer shot at it, has been arrested and charged by federal authorities. They allege he assaulted immigration officers during the incident.

    In a statement, Longoria’s attorneys said Homeland Security Investigations agents arrived at the Longoria household at 4:18 a.m. Thursday, with an armored personnel carrier, a type of military vehicle, and deployed more than a dozen “fully armed and armored” agents to swarm the home, breaking the locks on his gate. An agent called out to Longoria to come out, using a bullhorn, as agents stood at each door and pointed their rifles at the door and at the occupants inside, the attorneys said.

    “These are the type of tactics reserved for dangerous criminals such as violent gang members, drug lords, and terrorists,” the attorneys said. “It was clearly intended to intimidate and punish Mr. Longoria and his family for daring to speak out about their attempted murder by ICE and CBP agents on August 16th.”

    On that day, federal immigration officers stopped Longoria in San Bernardino. During the encounter, Longoria, who was in his truck with his 18-year-old son and 23-year-old son-in-law, feared for his safety and drove off after masked officers shattered his car window, his attorneys said.

    Department of Homeland Security officials have said officers were injured during the encounter when Longoria tried to “run them down.” Longoria’s attorneys dispute their client injured the officers or attempted to hit them, and earlier this week they called for an investigation of the shooting.

    On Friday morning, the U.S. attorney’s office confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Longoria the day before. Word of his arrest was earlier reported by the San Bernardino Sun.

    Ciaran McEvoy, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said Longoria made an initial appearance before a U.S. District Court judge in Riverside, and is set to be arraigned on Sept. 30. The federal magistrate judge ordered him released on a $5,000 bond.

    Longoria was being held at the San Bernardino County jail, in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, as of Thursday afternoon, McEvoy said in an email.

    “Since Longoria is an illegal alien, ICE has a detainer on him,” he said. Longoria’s attorneys said their client was transferred into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as of Friday.

    An unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed federal agents arrested Longoria at his home.

    “CBP and ICE remain committed to enforcing the law, protecting officers, and keeping dangerous criminals off America’s streets — even as local officials in California undermine those efforts,” the official said.

    According to a criminal complaint submitted by a Homeland Security Investigations agent, whose name is redacted, Longoria is facing a charge of assault on a federal officer with a deadly/dangerous weapon.

    In the complaint, the agent, who interviewed the officers who stopped Longoria, said the officers had stopped Longoria’s GMC pickup truck to conduct “an immigration check.” Two of them were ICE officers and the other two were CBP officers.

    The complaint states that the officers were identifiable by their visible clothing marked with “police.”

    After they stopped Longoria’s truck, the complaint states, he refused to comply with the demands to turn off his vehicle and roll down the window. One of the CBP officers, identified as J.C., decided to break the window after Longoria refused the commands, and was allegedly struck by the driver’s door on his left elbow and left calf. The passenger side window was also shattered by agents during the encounter.

    Another CBP officer was allegedly struck by the front bumper/fender of the truck on his right leg. “The Truck kept pushing Officer S.T., and Officer S.T. shot at the Truck, afraid for his life,” according to the complaint.

    Longoria’s attorneys had previously released surveillance video of the incident, which appears to dispute a key claim by Homeland Security — that Longoria drove his truck toward officers and injured them.

    In the surveillance video, the moment Longoria drives away, officers on both sides of the truck remain in sight of the video, and they then pile into their vehicles and pursue Longoria’s truck down a side street.

    After Longoria drove off, the family called 911. While San Bernardino police were questioning Longoria, the immigration officers arrived, and family members identified the one they believed had shot at the truck.

    At the initial court appearance, the judge questioned the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, Cory Burleson, about the government’s claim that it was conducting an “immigration check,” a term he couldn’t clarify when asked by the court, according to Longoria’s attorneys. Burleson also claimed Longoria was stopped due to a traffic violation, but couldn’t identify the violation, his attorneys said. When the judge asked Burleson to identify the alleged injuries of the officers, Burleson said he was “not aware of any injuries,” Longoria’s attorneys said.

    Longoria’s attorneys said their client was granted bond, but because of the ICE hold, has since been transferred into ICE custody, which they believe is the “true purpose of this false and baseless charge.”

    “No reasonable prosecutor could believe that a conviction would be secured against Mr. Longoria for the August 16th stop, when every video supports Mr. Longoria’s version of events and directly contradicts DHS’ story,” his attorneys said. “Yet [the Department of Justice] will not drop the charges; it has been their practice during this Administration to pursue charges based on unsubstantiated and false affidavits in order to arrest individuals and then turn them over to ICE.”

    His attorneys said they intend to continue advocating for Longoria, his son and son-in-law.

    “We are in contact with local and State authorities and are encouraging a state investigation and criminal charges against the ICE/CBP agents,” the attorneys said.

    This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

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    Melissa Gomez

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