A New York couple’s nightmare odyssey through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention reveals an elaborate internment apparatus that is by turns arbitrary, “dehumanizing,” and “barbaric.”

“And that’s by design,” an advocate for the two men told The Washington Blade.

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Gay couple from homophobic country is now trying to self-deport after mistreatment ICE detention

“At every step, it feels designed to be as insular, as cruel, and as impenetrable as possible,” said Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft, a progressive Baptist minister who is publicly advocating for the couple. “At every turn, we’re seeing a new kind of cruelty.”

Allan and Matthew Marrero met several years ago after Allan immigrated from the Cayman Islands. The couple married two years ago and began the legal process to obtain a green card for Allan, before his long-scheduled interview last November with an immigration official at Federal Plaza in New York City.

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It began with an unforced error for the men: When the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services officer asked for their passports, they didn’t have them, despite bringing all the documentation they thought was required — “a three-inch binder of our entire life — photos, letters, everything,” Matthew said.

“‘I don’t want that. Take it all apart,’” the officer told the couple. “That was the moment I knew something wasn’t right.”

The interview went downhill from there.

“I looked over at my husband when she asked how we met — just instinct. He’s the love of my life,” Matthew said. “She snapped her fingers in my face and said, ‘Don’t look at him.’ We’re telling our love story, and I’m not even allowed to look at my husband.”

Then the couple was questioned about a missed immigration hearing three years earlier. Allan was in rehab at the time, but the absence earned a removal order from the judge in his case.

“He didn’t realize that he had a removal order in his name,” explained Alexandra Rizio, the couple’s attorney. “When you have a removal order, it means ICE can pick you up at any moment. He walked into that interview completely unaware that he was at risk of being arrested on the spot.”

The officer acknowledged that the couple’s marriage was legitimate, but denied Allan’s green card application, telling them they’d have to explain themselves to an immigration judge.  

“She told us, ‘Out of the goodness of my heart, I’ll let you leave today. I could have called ICE, but I won’t,’” Matthew recounted.

Whether or not she did is unclear, but minutes later, Allan was in wrist restraints and disappeared by ICE officers down a back hallway in the federal building.

What followed was a nightmarish three-month ordeal through the Trump administration’s labyrinthine detention apparatus, with Matthew trying to keep up with his husband’s serial relocation through seven states across the country.

After being detained at the federal building in New York, agents shackled Allan’s hands and feet and transferred him (in the middle of the night) to Delaney Hall, a detention facility in New Jersey. Two weeks later, he was disappeared again to a detention camp in Phoenix, Arizona where detainees were kept in overcrowded tent enclosures without seating. From there, he was transferred through facilities in Texas and Louisiana before a stretch at the massive “Alligator Alcatraz” ICE detention camp in Florida.

“He told me about being in a cage in the Everglades — 30 men, toilets overflowing next to where they sleep,” Matthew said. “There were signs about poisonous snakes, and he said, ‘If one shows up, I’m going to die — there’s nobody here.’”

It was there that the rationale of a seemingly chaotic and capricious detention system came into focus.

“ICE officers would tell them, ‘You’re a burden to your family. Just sign your self-deportation papers,’” Matthew explained. “He would call me crying, saying, ‘Just let me go, forget about me.’

Matthew called the tactic “psychological warfare.”

Rizio, the couple’s attorney, agreed, and confirmed the same terrifying story to The Washington Blade.

“None of what I just described reflects a system that cares about justice,” she said. “It feels like punishment. I feel very confident these actions are designed to make people give up.”

Now Allan is in a seventh location, an ICE detention facility in Natchez, Mississippi. At one hearing, with Matthew there in support, a judge revoked Allan’s deportation order; a second judge restored it, calling Allan a “habitual drunkard.” At every turn, ICE has invoked extra-legal provisions keeping Matthew’s husband in detention.

“Allan has already lost over three months of his life,” said the couple’s lawyer. “He’s never going to get that time back.”

Supporters have launched a GoFundMe campaign for the couple.

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