A Wisconsin man who voted for Donald Trump in the November presidential election was stunned when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained his wife at the airport.
Bradley Bartell told USA Today, that he was returning from Puerto Rico with his wife Camila Muñoz, for their honeymoon, when an immigration agent pulled her aside in the airport and asked if she is a citizen.
Muñoz answered that she was not. She entered the country legally in 2019 and had overstayed her visa. However, she is going through the process to become a legal U.S. permanent resident.
Muñoz was detained at the airport and Bartell found out days later that she is being held at a private detention center in Louisiana.
“Emotionally, I’m concerned for her,” he 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.”
Bartell said they were saving to buy a home, now that money will go into attorneys fees and savings to pay a bond for his wife’s release.
Bartell voted for Trump and his promise to crack down on ‘criminal illegal immigrants.’ He said he never thought his wife would get swept up by ICE because she does not have a criminal record and is a hard-working woman who came legally, not one of the “illegals” who crossed the border that Trump promised to deport.
“I knew they were cracking down. I guess I didn’t know how it was going down,” Bartell said, adding “they need to get the vetting done and not keep these people locked up. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Muñoz is one of several women who entered the US legally and were detained at an airport despite not having a criminal record and is going through the process of becoming a legal citizen, according to USA Today.
“If you are not a citizen of the United States, and you are going through an immigration process, your first thought needs to be: How can this process be weaponized against me?” Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana told the outlet.