On Sept. 16, Barbara Gomes Marques Could and her husband arrived on the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration constructing for what they believed can be the ultimate step in Marques Could’s course of to acquire her inexperienced card.
The interview course of had gone easily, Tucker Could recalled. However towards the top, a federal immigration official she had met with stated he wanted Marques Could to comply with him so he may photocopy her passport, he recalled. She and her husband believed the journey can be transient and they’d be capable of go away.
As a substitute, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested Marques Could, a 38-year-old Brazilian nationwide who has no prison file and works as a movie director in Los Angeles. She was handcuffed and transferred to the ICE facility in Adelanto in San Bernardino County earlier than being despatched to Louisiana. In the meantime, her husband and her lawyer scrambled to attempt to cease her deportation.
On Wednesday, Marques Could was scheduled to board a 6 a.m. flight to her house nation, however her legal professional was capable of file a movement to reopen her deportation proceedings and preserve her on U.S. soil, a minimum of quickly. As of Thursday, she had been moved to Arizona and can return to California whereas her deportation proceedings stay open, her legal professional stated.
“It’s very a lot an ongoing nightmare,” Tucker Could stated in an interview this week.
Division of Homeland Safety officers didn’t reply to a request for remark about Marques Could’s case.
In response to her legal professional, Marcelo Gondim, Marques Could arrived within the U.S. in 2018 on a vacationer visa. Gondim stated she utilized for an extension however was denied. She ended up overstaying her visa, he stated, and in 2019, the federal government despatched her a discover to look for a court docket listening to to start deportation proceedings.
However Marques Could had moved and had not stored her deal with updated with immigration court docket, and so the letter by no means reached her, Gondim stated. As a result of she failed to look, the federal government issued a removing order towards her.
In April 2025, the couple obtained married and she or he started the method to use for a inexperienced card, Gondim stated. Beneath the Biden administration, he stated, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers would have notified Marques Could that there was a removing order issued for her and directed her on learn how to get it resolved.
Overstaying a visa is just not thought-about a prison offense, and penalties are issued if the particular person leaves the nation. In instances involving married {couples}, Gondim stated, there’s an automated forgiveness for overstaying a visa, aid that Marques Could would’ve been eligible for.
However the Trump administration has as a substitute used courthouses and Citizenship and Immigration Providers places of work to interact in mass arrests of migrants attending mandated hearings and appointments. Quickly, the USCIS may have expanded powers.
In September, the Division of Homeland Safety issued a brand new directive that can enable the company — which administers and oversees immigration purposes — to implement immigration legislation with “particular brokers.” The order goes into impact Monday.
“USCIS may have larger capability to help DHS efforts by dealing with investigations from begin to end, as a substitute of referring sure instances to Homeland Safety Investigation inside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the company stated in a press release.
After Marques Could was arrested, Could struggled to determine the place federal authorities had despatched his spouse. Lastly, he was capable of get in contact together with her, and she or he detailed how, when she was arrested in L.A., she burst into tears, and an ICE agent took a selfie together with her, he stated.
Throughout her switch between detention amenities, she advised him, she was subjected to harsh circumstances, together with how she went with out meals or water for greater than 12 hours and had entry to bogs with no rest room paper. She was given solely bread and water and a few occasions an apple.
Marques Could, who had surgical procedure this 12 months for continual again issues, was additionally denied medical remedy for a tool she makes use of to handle her ache, he stated. Could went public together with her arrest greater than every week after she was detained, he stated, as a result of he had run out of all authorized avenues.
“There may be an open disdain being proven by ICE for the essential rule of legislation for this nation,” he stated.
Could started posting about her arrest on-line, garnering lots of of responses and help. A GoFundMe web page had raised greater than $50,000 as of Thursday. U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who counts Marques Could as one in every of her constituents, stated she was “doing all the things attainable to forestall her deportation and I’m demanding that ICE comply with the legislation.”
“Sadly, Barbara’s case is just not distinctive, it displays a broader sample beneath Trump’s immigration insurance policies which can be illegal and merciless,” she posted on X.
Gondim stated he repeatedly tried to cease her from being transferred to amenities outdoors California, solely to seek out obstacles and delays by ICE officers to getting authorized paperwork for her to signal. From Adelanto, she was transferred to Arizona, then Louisiana.
The federal government is just not doing something improper by complying with the removing order, he stated, “however they can’t stop the particular person from gaining access to counsel and be capable of current their case to file some type of aid [so they] don’t get unjustly deported.”
To cease Marques Could’s imminent deportation, Gondim filed separate motions to reopen her deportation proceedings and terminate her deportation proceedings. Till a choose guidelines on the case, Gondim stated, ICE can not deport her. He stated he’s hopeful that she’s going to find yourself being launched.
“Since she has already an permitted petition from her U.S. citizen husband, and she or he has a transparent path to submitting a brand new [application] and getting her inexperienced card,” he stated, an immigration court docket choose won’t be taken with pursuing a case towards an individual who must be permitted for everlasting residency by legislation.
Till then, Could stated his spouse’s first characteristic movie has been placed on maintain till she will be launched. In 2021, Marques Could premiered her brief movie, “Pretas,” on the Culver Theater for the L.A. Brazilian Movie Competition. The movie facilities on Black girls and their experiences coping with racism and carries a message of making a extra anti-racist society.
“I really like Los Angeles a lot,” she stated in an interview on the time. “I couldn’t be happier. It was a premiere I wasn’t anticipating.”
It was their shared love of movies that bonded the couple, who met on a courting app, Could stated. They spent quite a lot of their time collectively watching films, sharing popcorn after which discussing what labored and didn’t within the movies.
Could says he now thinks about all of the immigrants who haven’t dedicated any crimes however lack the authorized assets to keep away from deportation.
“These are human beings that these horrible issues are taking place to,” he stated. “If anyone reads tales like this, in the event that they suppose this doesn’t apply to them as a result of they’re not married to an immigrant, I urge these folks to think about what they suppose comes subsequent.”
