Green Card appointments are becoming a trap - we can barely keep up with how military families are being torn apart

In recent weeks, something has been happening in the United States that has not existed in this form for decades – and it hits many completely unprepared. People appear for their green card interview to resolve their immigration status, and they are arrested immediately afterward. Not at a border, not during a raid, not while trying to evade anything, but in the middle of the official appointment they dutifully attended.

We receive new cases from multiple states every single day. Couples go to the agency together, often holding the hands of small children, and do not leave together. The justifications sound as if someone had reduced the law to the smallest common denominator: an overstayed visa, sometimes expired for years, nothing beyond that. No criminal record, no danger to anyone, no fraud. It affects people who entered legally – with tourist, visitor, or student visas – and who are now being accused of filing their application at a time when the United States no longer seems to ask how someone lives, but only how easily they can be detained.

What was once a sober administrative appointment is now a risk. ICE sits inside USCIS buildings, sometimes in the same hallway as the families, waiting for a door to open and a name to be called. That the law allows arrests has always been the case. But for decades there was a simple, civilized boundary: people who voluntarily resolve their status and submit to the process are not turned into “cases” at that very location. This boundary was quietly abolished under Trump, without an announcement, without a public debate.

I traveled to Delaney Hall, the same detention center where the mayor of Newark was arrested, to visit my stepfather. It is absolutely insane how unclear the information is, how the security personnel treat you, and how extremely narrow the visitation window is for detainees.

This is hitting San Diego particularly hard. Within two weeks, a series of cases emerged in which military families were targeted – people whose daily lives consist of deployments, relocations, funerals, homecomings, and rebuilding, and who are now watching the government they served take their spouses away while they sit next to them.

Samuel Shasteen, formerly a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps, has twenty years of service behind him, including two deployments to Afghanistan. His service record, his awards, his missions – all of it is included in the documents he submitted to the immigration authorities. His first wife died of cancer in 2022. Later he met Chanidaphon Sopimpa from Thailand; she, he says, filled the emptiness that loss left behind. The two marry, she overstays her visa, and like countless other couples they choose the regular path: application for adjustment of status, green card process, interview on November 18, 2025 at USCIS, outcome: still open.

What happens next is described by Shasteen in simple terms: “I honestly feel betrayed.” In the middle of the interview, ICE officers enter the room, put handcuffs on his wife, and take her away. She cries, he stands next to her, unable to do anything. The country to which he gave twenty years of his life uses the very appointment that was supposed to secure his marriage to arrest his wife. His attorney calls the case “straightforward” and points out that there used to be a clear exception for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens – especially for spouses of soldiers and veterans.

The husband stands by as ICE arrests his wife during the appointment. And one thing becomes clear in such moments: when a state stops showing compassion and no longer sees people in difficult situations, it loses exactly what once made it human.
Und eines zeigt sich in solchen Momenten deutlich: Wenn ein Staat aufhört, Mitgefühl zu zeigen und Menschen in schwierigen Situationen nicht mehr sieht, verliert er genau das, was ihn einmal menschlich gemacht hat.

Only a few days earlier, another family was hit. A Navy veteran arrived with his wife, an Australian citizen. No criminal record, no other irregularities. She too was taken away by ICE after the interview. Her attorney, William Menard, says he has never seen arrests at these interviews in more than ten years. She spends eight days in federal detention. Only after an immigration judge sets bond is she released. Menard asks publicly whom these eight days were meant to benefit. There is no answer.

In the same building, we see the same thing happen to active duty Navy member Thomas McCarthy. He accompanies his wife Jessica to the appointment, both convinced they were “doing the right thing,” as he later puts it. Instead of a decision on the green card, they receive a detention order. Jessica is taken away, McCarthy stands there holding paperwork and must understand that their attempt to follow the rules is now being used against them.

Almost all of these people end up at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a private immigration prison near the Mexican border. In our research and casework, we found that after the arrest a business card with a QR code was sent, with instructions to “check there to see what happens next.” Shasteen calls this “propaganda” – an attempt to frame the situation with a piece of plastic and some image language. His son, who already lost one mother, can barely stand being at home; he avoids the place that reminds him of that pain.

Attorneys who have handled green card cases for years say an unprecedented line has been crossed. Until recently, the unwritten rule was simple: if you are married to a U.S. citizen, have committed no crimes, and follow the legal process, the state respects that step. For military families in particular, this was a quiet promise – a minimum level of security for people who built their lives around service to this country. Now we see that this trust is being turned against them, and we can barely keep up with the cases.

In Minnesota, people formed a human chain to prevent ICE officers from carrying out a detention.

ICE maintains its standardized answer: an overstayed visa is a violation of federal law, anyone can be arrested anywhere, including in USCIS offices. Legally this may be correct. Politically and humanly it explains nothing. It does not explain why those who voluntarily present themselves are being targeted – and often their applications were simply left unprocessed for up to 18 months. It does not explain why people are handcuffed when their entire “offense” is a wrong stamp in a passport or a reminder that their application has not even been reviewed. And it does not explain why this approach is being tightened at the very moment the government publicly presents itself as a defender of family and order.

This development is dangerous because it appeared abruptly and because it affects the relationship between citizens and the state at a point where trust should be indispensable. Anyone who spends months gathering documents, paying high fees, undergoing medical examinations, and navigating the forms of the immigration authority assumes that the system is based on predictability. Instead, couples who trust this system are put into situations where they lose all control. Some postpone their appointments out of fear, others attend anyway because they believe that not going will only make everything worse.

The question hanging in the air is simple and cannot be wrapped in polite language: is this truly about enforcing immigration law – or about creating a climate in which people are intimidated before they even receive a decision? Is this a test to see how far authorities can intervene in the lives of ordinary families without triggering political resistance? Or is what we are seeing already the new routine quietly imposed across the country?

What is clear is that a government that invokes “family values” at every opportunity cannot simultaneously allow families to be torn apart when no crime is involved. People who trust the state and take the legal path must not be the ones on whose backs harshness is demonstrated. Yet that is exactly what is happening right now – first visible in San Diego, now in several states. We handle these cases, we support and help those affected, we review what is in the files, whether there are any files at all, and we document how these decisions damage the lives of the people involved. We review their documents, explain procedures, provide contacts, and accompany the cases so they do not have to face this practice alone. Right now, just before Christmas, the cases are piling up – and we process each one, including pure deportation cases, as quickly as possible so that maybe some families can still have a Christmas with a better ending.