ICE detains Army sergeant's newlywed wife inside Fort Polk during benefits registration

On Thursday, April 2, 2026, federal immigration agents detained Annie Ramos, a 22-year-old college student and the newlywed wife of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, inside Fort Polk, Louisiana. The couple, married in March, had come to the base so Ramos could receive her military ID and activate spouse benefits — the first steps toward a green card through the military-spouse pathway the government itself provides. Ramos was born in Honduras and brought to the United States in 2005, before she turned 2; that same year, after her family missed an immigration hearing, a judge issued a final order of removal against her in absentia. She applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2020, but the application has sat in limbo amid litigation over the program.

Ramos spent five days at an immigration detention center before being released on April 7 on an order of supervision, wearing a GPS ankle monitor and required to report to ICE weekly while removal proceedings continue. The Department of Homeland Security defended the arrest, stating that Ramos "has no legal status to be in this country" and that "this administration is not going to ignore the rule of law." The detention operationalizes DHS's April 2025 rescission of a 2022 policy that treated an immediate family member's military service as a "significant mitigating factor" in enforcement decisions; the replacement policy states that military service "alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws."

The arrest of a spouse actively pursuing legal status through the channel the government provides — executed on a military installation, enforcing a removal order issued against a 20-month-old — drew sharp criticism from military-family advocates and immigration-law experts. Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert, noted the case would previously have been easy to resolve and warned the practice is "bad for morale, it disrupts the soldiers' readiness." More than 60 members of Congress had earlier warned DHS and the Defense Department that arrests of service members' family members betray promises made to those who serve, and may rely on information families voluntarily supplied to the government in connection with that service.