Tag Archives: citizenship

India Today: Will not accept this intimidation: Zohran Mamdani reacts to Trump’s arrest threat

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The Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is not backing down. In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), Mamdani blasted President Donald Trump for what he described as a direct threat to his rights and citizenship. The comments come amid Trump’s escalating rhetoric on immigration enforcement and his vow to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations if reelected.

“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp, and deported,” Mamdani wrote in a statement posted online. “Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.”

Won’t accept this intimidation: Zohran Mamdani slams Trump over arrest threat
New York lawmaker Zohran Mamdani accused Trump of threatening his arrest and deportation over anti-immigration stance, vowing resistance and warning that such intimidation targets all vocal New Yorkers.

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/us-news/story/zohran-mamdani-reacts-to-trump-arrest-threat-says-will-not-accept-this-intimidation-glbs-2749232-2025-07-02

Guardian: Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for’

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As Trump urges more deportations, veterans are seeing their parents, children and even themselves detained

The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May.

Jermaine Thomas’s deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicle, is one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.

As the Chronicle reported, Thomas was born on a US army base in Germany to an American citizen father, who was originally born in Jamaica and is now dead. Thomas does not have US, German or Jamaican citizenship – but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency deported him anyway to Jamaica, a country in which he had never set foot.

Thomas had spent two-and-a-half months incarcerated while waiting for an update on his case. He was previously at the center of a case brought before the US supreme court regarding his unique legal status.

The federal government argued that Thomas – who had previously received a deportation order – was not a citizen simply because he was born on a US army base, and it used prior criminal convictions to buttress the case against him. He petitioned for a review of the order, but the supreme court denied him, finding his father “did not meet the physical presence requirement of the [law] in force at the time of Thomas’s birth”.

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In another recent case, the wife of another Marine Corps veteran was detained by Ice despite still breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. According to the Associated Press, the veteran’s wife had been going through a process to obtain legal residency.

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In March, Ice officials arrested the daughter of a US veteran who had been fighting a legal battle regarding her status. Alma Bowman, 58, was taken into custody by Ice during a check-in at the Atlanta field office, despite her having lived in the US since she was 10 years old.

Bowman was born in the Philippines during the Vietnam war, to a US navy service member from Illinois stationed there. She had lived in Georgia for almost 50 years. Her permanent residency was revoked following a minor criminal conviction from 20 years ago, leading her to continue a legal battle to obtain citizenship in the US.

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In another recent case, a US army veteran and green-card holder left on his own to South Korea. His deportation order was due to charges related to drug possession and an issue with drug addiction after being wounded in combat in the 1980s, for which he earned the prestigious Purple Heart citation.

“I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Sae Joon Park, who had held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio. “That blows me away – like, [it is] a country that I fought for.”

Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for’
As Trump urges more deportations, veterans are seeing their parents, children and even themselves detained

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/us-military-veterans-detained-trump

Latin Times: Dozens of US Citizens Were Deported by ICE Before Trump Started His Second Term: Report

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Multiple administrations have reportedly been deporting U.S. citizens since at least 2015

… a newly released government watchdog report revealed that at least 70 documented U.S. citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that toward the end of former President Barack Obama’s second term and throughout President Donald Trump’s first, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 674 possible U.S. citizens, detained 121 and deported at least 70, though the actual numbers may be higher.

“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens,” the report revealed.

The problem is systemic, according to Migrant Insider, since “ICE has not implemented a reliable system to track and correct its mistakes.”

Dozens of US Citizens Were Deported by ICE Before Trump Started His Second Term: Report
The Government Accountability Office, a watchdog group, found that U.S. citizens have been deported since at least 2015, and were detained as early as 2002.

https://www.latintimes.com/dozens-us-citizens-were-deported-ice-before-trump-started-his-second-term-report-585608

Washington Post: A powerful tool in Trump’s immigration crackdown: The routine traffic stop

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ICE has vastly expanded its work with local police to arrest undocumented immigrants at traffic stops. In a break with past practice, many of the detained have no violent criminal record.

Chelsea White and her husband were driving home from cleaning office buildings one May evening when they happened upon a Tennessee Highway Patrol checkpoint. It was a situation the couple feared — and had taken precautions to avoid.

White rolled down the driver’s side window on the Ford Fusion with their company’s logo. She drove because her husband, Hilario Martínez García, 46, is undocumented and cannot obtain a license in Tennessee.

One of the officers looked at Martínez, she recalled, and instructed them to pull into a nearby parking lot and step out of the car. Agents in black vests began patting them down and reaching into their pockets. They let White, 31, go when they saw her driver’s license. But her husband had no proof of U.S. citizenship.

The officers escorted him away.

“That was the last time I saw him,” she said.

The searches were clearly unconstitutional.

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After Martínez was arrested, White did not hear anything for a week. She began to worry that her husband had been taken to Guantánamo or El Salvador. She couldn’t eat or sleep. She became so stressed she thought she was going to miscarry.

Finally, with the help of a lawyer, she made contact. “First thing that came out of his mouth was, ‘Are you okay and are the kids okay?’ And I said the same thing — ‘How are you?’” White said. He told her the guards hadn’t allowed him to make calls at the jail until he was about to be transferred to an ICE detention center.

Last week, Martinez was deported back to Mexico. It’s not clear what the next steps are for him. Though there is a pathway to citizenship through his 2013 marriage to White, a U.S. citizen, he never got his papers because they could not afford the legal fees. Now, his lawyer, Michael Holley, said his wife could petition for a visa for him, and he could apply for an exemption from the 10-year ban on his return that is currently in place. But that process, if successful, would take at least five years, the attorney said.

In the month and a half since Martinez has been gone, White’s life has begun to unravel. Without her husband’s income, she has fallen behind on rent. One of her cars was repossessed. And she was forced to withdraw from classes at a community college where she was pursuing a nursing degree, a lifelong dream.

She still gets questions from her children, who are 6, 9 and 11. They didn’t know their father was undocumented, and she has struggled to explain it — and why they are paying the price.

A powerful tool in Trump’s immigration crackdown: The routine traffic stop
ICE is working with local police to arrest more undocumented immigrants at traffic stops. In a break with the past, many arrestees have no violent criminal record.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/22/trump-ice-deportation-arrests-traffic-stops

Independent: Texas man returns from honeymoon alone after wife is arrested by ICE in US Virgin Islands

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Taahir Shaikh of Arlington says his wife, Ward Sakeik, was detained by ICE in February in St. Thomas

A recently-married Texas couple has spent over 120 days apart after the bride was detained by ICE during their honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands.

Taahir Shaikh of Arlington says his wife, Ward Sakeik, was detained by ICE in February in St. Thomas, despite having a pending green card application and documentation of her stateless status.

“She’s considered stateless, which essentially just means you’re born in a country that doesn’t give you birthright citizenship. And since she was a Palestinian refugee that was born in Saudi Arabia, they weren’t recognized as Saudi nationals,” Shaikh told NBC DFW.

Shaikh said Sakeik was just 8 years old when her family arrived in the U.S. on a visa. Although their asylum request was denied, her lack of citizenship meant the government couldn’t deport them. Instead, they were placed under an order of supervision and required to check in with immigration authorities once a year.

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Since then, Sakeik has graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington and now works as a wedding photographer. She has always complied with immigration rules for 14 years, Shaikh said.

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[Her husband] says they carefully chose to travel to the U.S. Virgin Islands for their honeymoon, believing it wouldn’t jeopardize her pending immigration status.

ICE addressed Sakeik’s arrest in a statement to NBC DFW, writing, “The arrest of Ward Sakeik was not part of a targeted operation by ICE. She chose to leave the country and was then flagged by CBP trying to re-enter the U.S.

“The facts are she is in our country illegally. She overstayed her visa and has had a final order by an immigration judge for over a decade. President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S.”

ICE concluded, “She had a final order of removal since 2011. Her appeal of the final order was dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals on February 12, 2014. She has exhausted her due process rights and all of her claims for relief have been denied by the courts.”

But as the government has already admitted, she has nowhere to go. Period. Stop. That should be the end of the story.

Texas man returns from honeymoon alone after wife detained by ICE
Taahir Shaikh of Arlington says his wife, Ward Sakeik, was detained by ICE in February in St. Thomas

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/wife-arrested-texas-ice-couple-b2774196.html

Newsweek: Woman detained on honeymoon faces deportation despite being stateless

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Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old who recently married a U.S. citizen, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in February after returning from her honeymoon, and her husband fears she may soon be deported.

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ICE detained Sakeik in February as she and her husband, Taahir Shaikh, returned from their honeymoon to the U.S. Virgin Islands. The couple got married in January.

Shaikh told reporters that his wife may be deported to an unknown location soon. The ICE detainee database showed that as of Friday, she was still being held at the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville, Texas.

However, a spokesperson for the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) told Newsweek that she was being detained in the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.

Sakeik, who is of Palestinian descent, was born in Saudi Arabia but holds no citizenship there. Her husband said she was unable to obtain Saudi citizenship.

“She’s stateless, she doesn’t hold citizenship in any part of this world,” he told WFAA.

Sakeik first came to the United States when she was 8 years old. Her husband said her family applied for asylum but a judge signed a removal order. She was later given legal permission to work in the country, he said.

She was in the process of obtaining her green card and had attended all the mandatory immigration appointments, with one slated for July prior to her detention, her husband said.

In December 2023, Sakeik graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism, her LinkedIn page said. She has been working as a wedding photographer for more than five years.

On Thursday, the North Texas chapter of CAIR held a news conference on the matter, saying in a media advisory, “Despite a pending green-card application, a lawful marriage to a U.S. citizen, and a spotless compliance record for the past 15 years, ICE has notified Sakeik’s legal counsel that Sakeik could be removed as early as tonight—but will not disclose the destination country. Sakeik’s husband fears she could be sent to a country that she has no birth or national ties to, after being given a life to live here for 15 years.”

Woman detained on honeymoon faces deportation despite being stateless
Ward Sakeik has been detained for four months and now faces deportation to an unknown location, her husband says.

https://www.newsweek.com/stateless-woman-detained-honeymoon-faces-deportation-2085161

Latin Times: MAGA Green Card Holder Detained by ICE at Final Citizenship Interview Denied Bail

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A Danish green card holder and father of four was denied bail after being detained by ICE during what was supposed to be his final citizenship interview in Tennessee.

Kasper Eriksen, 32, came to the U.S. in 2009 as a student and later married his high school sweetheart, Savannah, with whom he settled in rural Mississippi, according to the Daily Beast.

After receiving his green card in 2013, he began the naturalization process, but unknowingly missed a key immigration filing deadline in 2015—around the same time the couple suffered the stillbirth of their first child.

On April 15, 2025, Eriksen was detained in Memphis, Tennessee, without warning by ICE agents during his scheduled naturalization interview. He was later transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena.

“Kasper was detained for a paperwork miscommunication from 2015, and I was sent home with no explanation and no idea where my husband had been transported,” Kasper’s wife said. “I was 22 weeks pregnant at the time, and as I drove the 3-hour journey back to Sturgis, Mississippi, to say I couldn’t control my emotions would be an understatement.”

ICE claims his failure to submit Form I-751 to remove conditions on his green card a decade ago voided his path to citizenship. At a court hearing on May 28, an immigration judge agreed to reopen Eriksen’s case but denied him bond, meaning he must remain in detention.

If he failed to file an I-751 (Removal of Conditions) 2015, that means his original 2013 green card was a conditional two-year green card. He is not presently a green card holder.

I hope they get this worked out, but it does appear that he has been here illegally for the past ten years.

And he’s a MAGA supporter? 😀 As the old commercial goes, “You asked for it! You got it! Toyota!” It looks like you’ll just have to experience what you wished on others.

MAGA Green Card Holder Detained by ICE at Final Citizenship Interview Denied Bail
ICE detained a Danish MAGA supporter at his citizenship interview over a paperwork error, and a judge has now denied him bail despite no criminal record and four U.S.-born children.

https://www.latintimes.com/maga-green-card-holder-detained-ice-final-citizenship-interview-denied-bail-584002

Associated Press: Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections, including requiring proof of citizenship

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Are we now ruled by dictatorial edict? Only Congress can pass laws; the President gets to sign them only after both houses of Congress have passed them. Der Führer seems to think he can skip a few steps.

Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections, including requiring proof of citizenship
President Donald Trump has signed a sweeping executive action to overhaul elections in the United States.

Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections, including requiring proof of citizenship | AP News