Updated April 7, 2026 / 5:33 PM EDT — CBS/AP
A 22-year-old newlywed who was detained by immigration agents on a Louisiana Army base has been released while removal proceedings continue, authorities and advocates said Tuesday.
Annie Ramos, a college student and the wife of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, was released on an order of supervision with a GPS monitor, the Department of Homeland Security said. TheDream.US, a nonprofit that provides scholarships to undocumented immigrants, also confirmed her release.
Ramos was detained at Fort Polk days after she and Blank married in March. Blank said he had brought her to the base last Thursday so she could begin the process to receive military benefits and pursue a green card; the couple had planned to live together on post after the Easter weekend. “I never imagined that trying to do the right thing would lead to her being taken away from me,” Blank, 23, told The Associated Press. “What was supposed to be the happiest week of our lives has turned into one of the hardest.”
In a statement released by TheDream.US, Ramos said, “I am deeply grateful to my husband, Matthew, who never stopped fighting for me, and to our families and community who surrounded us with love, prayers, and support. Because of them, I am home. All I have ever wanted is to live with dignity in the country I have called home since I was a baby. I want to finish my degree, continue my education, and serve my community — just as my husband serves our country with honor.”
DHS said Ramos was born in Honduras and entered the United States in 2005 when she was younger than 2. That year, her family failed to appear for an immigration hearing, and a judge issued a final order of removal, DHS said. Ramos applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2020, but her husband said her application has remained “in limbo” amid legal battles over the program.
Immigration and military family advocates criticized the detention and called it demoralizing. They warned that arresting or deporting spouses of service members could hurt recruitment and morale. Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert, said that before recent policy changes the case would likely have been resolved administratively through alternatives like parole in place or deferred action. “It doesn’t make any sense — they’re going to get arrested for following the law? That’s stupid,” Stock said, adding that such actions “disrupt the soldiers’ readiness.”
Last April, DHS eliminated a 2022 policy that had considered military service of an immediate family member a “significant mitigating factor” in enforcement decisions. The administration’s new guidance says “military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws,” and officials have said the department will enforce existing orders of removal.
More than 60 members of Congress wrote to DHS and the Department of Defense in September warning that arrests of military personnel and veterans’ family members were “betraying its promises to service members who play a key role in protecting U.S. national security,” and expressing concern that information provided by service members might be used to target families.
Lydiah Owiti-Otienoh, who runs the Foreign-Born Military Spouse Network, said she has seen more cases where tightening immigration enforcement has upended military families. “It just sends a really bad message — we don’t care about you, about your spouses, anything you are doing,” she said. “If military families are not stable, national security is not stable.”
Blank’s mother, Jen Rickling, described Ramos as “everything she hoped for,” saying Ramos, a Sunday school teacher and biochemistry major, “loves my son with her whole heart.” Rickling told The AP, “We absolutely adore her. I believe in this country. And I believe we can do better than this — for Annie, for other military families, and for the values we hold dear.”
Ramos’ detention and release were first reported by The New York Times. DHS noted that the administration is enforcing immigration laws and said it would not “ignore the rule of law.” Separately, internal DHS data obtained by CBS News showed that in January the number of detainees in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody surpassed 70,000 for the first time in the agency’s history.