For Spouses of U.S. Citizens, Green Card Interviews End in Handcuffs

The married couples filed into a federal building in San Diego last week for green card interviews that they believed would secure their future together in the United States. Half of each pair was American. Stephen Paul came with his British wife and their 4-month-old baby. Audrey Hestmark arrived with her German husband, days before their first wedding anniversary. Jason Cordero accompanied his Mexican wife.

It was supposed to be a celebratory milestone, the final step in the process to obtain U.S. permanent residency. Instead, as each interview with an immigration officer wrapped up, federal agents swooped in, handcuffed the foreign spouse and took him or her away.

“I had to take our baby from my crying wife’s arms,” Mr. Paul, 33, said, recalling the moment that agents said they were arresting his wife, Katie.

Ms. Paul was sent to an immigration detention center with hundreds of other people swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown. Her husband had to take a leave from his job at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department to care for their child and try to secure her release.

“It’s insane to have them rip our family apart,” Mr. Paul said. “Whoever is directing this has completely lost touch with their mission to the country.”

In recent weeks, immigration lawyers in several cities have seen a surge in arrests of foreign spouses of Americans during interviews at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices.

In San Diego alone, immigration lawyers in the region estimate that several dozen foreign-born spouses have been detained since Nov. 12, when the new tactic first surfaced, according to Andrew Nietor, an immigration lawyer. A former chair of the San Diego chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Mr. Nietor said the estimate was based on members’ communications about their clients. The exact number of spouses detained is unclear because many couples attend the routine interviews without lawyers, who would alert colleagues. The government has not disclosed a tally of such detentions.

In every case, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the applicants that they had overstayed tourist or business visas. An arrest warrant, reviewed by The New York Times, states that “there is probable cause to believe” that the named spouse is “removable from the United States.”

“Apprehensions at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices may occur if individuals are identified as having outstanding warrants; being subject to court-issued removal orders; or having committed fraud, crimes or other violations of immigration law while in the United States,” said Matthew J. Tragesser, an agency spokesman, noting that the arrests were typically carried out by ICE.

But the couples and their lawyers said they had followed the required steps: They had submitted extensive paperwork and paid fees. The foreign spouses had been fingerprinted and passed medical exams. None had criminal records. None had entered the country illegally. They had already been granted employment authorization.

“In 25 years of practice, I have never seen anything like this,” Johanna Keamy, the Pauls’ lawyer, said, echoing the view of other lawyers.

“The proper procedure was exactly what they did,” she said. “What’s next? Revoking green cards from millions who followed these same steps?”

Green-card applicants’ temporary visas often lapse while their “adjustment-of-status” proceeds over several months or longer.

An immigration statute passed by Congress in 1986 allows a spouse who entered the country lawfully to be eligible for a green card through marriage even if the person’s visa has expired.

“Congress was unambiguous — these people are eligible for green cards,” said Doug Rand, who was a senior official at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Biden administration.

While federal law does not prohibit spouses with expired visas from being detained and placed in deportation proceedings, in the past they have rarely been detained while applying for green cards.

The Trump administration is carrying out such detentions without having announced any change in policy.

“There has been no new executive order, regulation or ICE policy update that would have given these U.S. citizens notice that their spouses are in jeopardy,” Mr. Rand said.

Even as Mr. Trump has added vast numbers of officers to his mass deportation effort, frustration has mounted inside his administration over the pace of detentions and deportations.

The recent spate of arrests comes amid a leadership shake-up at ICE, including the San Diego region, designed to accelerate and advance the president’s agenda.

Ordinarily, foreign spouses of Americans are approved for U.S. permanent residency during or shortly after the in-person interview.

Audrey Hestmark, 38, and her husband, Thomas Bilger, 40, reported to the government office in San Diego on Nov. 20, hopeful he would have his green card for their first wedding anniversary two days later.

Mr. Bilger, a robotics engineer, had met and fallen in love with Ms. Hestmark during his business trips from Germany. After dating for four years, they were married on Nov. 22, 2024.

“Tom was super excited to become a U.S. resident, so much so that he had insisted on a cowboy-themed wedding,” said Ms. Hestmark, a registered nurse.

They immediately hired a lawyer and assembled documents from Germany and the United States to support their petition.

At the interview, they brought requisite evidence that their marriage was legitimate — photos of a vacation to Hawaii with his parents; leases, bank statements and utility bills in both names; and other records.

The officer asked routine questions. But the last one, according to Ms. Hestmark, was whether her husband had ever overstayed his visa. He responded truthfully and cited their lawyer’s assurance that this was a nonissue.

“Suddenly, we were ambushed by three masked men in bulletproof vests with guns who told Tom they had a warrant for his arrest, that he is here unlawfully,” Ms. Hestmark recalled.

The agents handcuffed her husband, gave her a card with a QR code for the ICE website and took him away. She did not hear from him again until the next morning. He has been bounced between a basement in downtown San Diego and an immigration detention center, where he remains.

“I’m a U.S. citizen,” Ms. Hestmark said. “Tom is the love of my life, who happens to be born in Germany. We feel like we were tricked.”

“We followed everything we were supposed to do,” she added. “And now Tom is suffering. We are all suffering,” including Mr. Bilger’s parents, she said, who are worried sick for their only child.

Some U.S. citizens have hired lawyers to seek the release of spouses, through actions such as posting bond. Once released, the foreign spouses must try to pursue green cards through immigration court, where judges are grappling with yearslong backlogs.

Mr. Nietor, the immigration lawyer, said that the government’s strategy appeared to be to induce the couples “to give up and abandon their cases and accept the foreign spouse’s deportation.”

Jason Cordero, 26, whose wife, Ludmila, a Mexican national, was detained last week during their interview, said she had been suffering from severe anxiety and having panic attacks in the detention facility.

“I really love this girl, and I don’t want to let her go,” said Jason Cordero, whose wife, Ludmila, was detained last week.

Mr. Cordero hails from a family of modest means, he said, and he had been working two jobs to get them on a stable footing since they married early this year. The couple had recently upgraded from a studio to a one-bedroom apartment in Oceanside, Calif., he said.

“Little by little we were moving up,” said Mr. Cordero, who works for a beverage distribution company and a fast-food chain. When three ICE agents took Ms. Cordero into custody for overstaying her visa, she began to weep, as did the Citizenship and Immigration Services officer who had been interviewing her, according to Mr. Cordero.

The ICE agents instructed his wife to remove her bracelets, earrings and wedding band, which she placed in her small brown purse and handed to her husband.

“I was shocked and heartbroken,” Mr. Cordero said. “We tried to be respectful because of everything about immigration we’d been seeing on the news.”

Mr. Cordero said he had given his wife a kiss goodbye and tried to calm her and had then gone to find a lawyer, who has filed a motion requesting a bond hearing. He said that he was prepared to spend his savings to pay, whatever the legal costs, to free his wife and reapply for a green card.

“I really love this girl, and I don’t want to let her go,” he said.

Katie and Stephen Paul met on a gaming platform more than two years ago. Their friendship flourished into a romance, and she visited Mr. Paul several times under the visa-waiver program for British nationals, which permits stays of up to three months at a time. She joined Mr. Paul’s family on a trip to Japan, and the couple married last October. Two days later, they discovered she was pregnant with Alan, now 4 months old.

They filed their green-card petition in July.

Their interview last week was going smoothly, he said, until three ICE agents walked in and informed them that Ms. Paul, who was holding her infant, was under arrest.

Their lawyer, Ms. Keamy, who was participating by telephone, objected, saying this had never happened before.

“I was completely dumbfounded,” she said. “I went numb.”

Mr. Paul said the agents had told him that they disagreed with the directive to arrest Ms. Paul but that they had to follow orders.

“They are having them grab everyone they can,” Mr. Paul said. “This is just not right.”

After Mr. Paul learned from his wife that the authorities were threatening to deport her without a hearing, he said, their lawyer filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Diego to halt her removal and secure her release.

In response, the government approved Ms. Paul’s green card on Tuesday and freed her.

Related Content