In a shocking decision, an immigration judge in Louisiana preemptively denied Allan Marrero a green card and ordered the 34-year-old Caymanian to be removed from the country.
The decision came a little more than a week after Marrero — a Brooklyn man taken into ICE custody during a marriage-based green card appointment just before Thanksgiving — was granted bond and expected to be released.
While Marrero remained detained in Mississippi as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) weighed appealing the decision, his lawyers began the process of re-applying for his green card ahead of a Feb. 9 hearing. But this week, an Indiana judge took the unusual step of denying the application before a hearing could take place or evidence was submitted to the court, surprising Marrero and his legal team.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review declined to comment on cases before the agency.
Marrero’s journey is emblematic of the trying, roller coaster experience faced by many immigrants currently fighting Donald Trump’s deportation agenda — even when they have a path to permanent residency in the United States.
“They’re claiming that they’re going after the worst of the worst and allowing people due process. This was not allowing due process,” said Marrero’s husband, Matthew.
In 2013, Marrero entered the United States on a visa from the Cayman Islands and once here he applied for asylum due to fear or persecution as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Over the years, he dutifully attended his asylum hearings, said Marrero’s family and legal team. However, around the time of a stay in a rehabilitation facility in 2022, Allan Marrero missed a notification for a court appearance. He missed the hearing and — unbeknownst to him — was given a removal order by the judge. He was detained when he and his husband attended a routine green card appointment at 26 Federal Plaza in November.
During his time in detention, Allan Marrero was moved to at least five different facilities across the Eastern, Southwest and Southern U.S., including Alligator Alcatraz in Florida. Eventually, he landed in Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, where he has been detained for several weeks.
During that time, one immigration judge reviewed evidence of the missed appointment, reopened his asylum case and withdrew the order of removal, his husband said. Then, in January, a separate judge ruled that Allan Marrero was neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and granted him bond. In this week’s preemptive ruling that terminated Marrero’s green card application and ordered him deported, the judge called Marrero a “habitual drunkard,” according to Matthew Marrero. The judge also noted his “same-sex marriage” in the decision, according to his lawyer Alexandra Rizio. Rizio said that she had never seen a judge “pretermit,” or preemptively throw out, an asylum claim or status adjustment application in this manner.
Judge James R. Holden of Indiana presided over the case, according to court documents reviewed by Documented. Holden was one of 25 temporary immigration judges appointed in October by the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Holden is a member of the Indiana Army National Guard and previously served as administrative judge for the Indiana Department of Agriculture, according to an October press release by the EOIR. The appointments followed a loosening of requirements for immigration judge applicants last summer that allowed for lawyers with no immigration experience to join the courts.
Allan Marrero plans to file an appeal to the decision and in the meantime continues to be detained in Mississippi.
你知道吗？非公民办理驾照时的这个错误可能会导致选民欺诈
“My family and I are extremely angry at the ruling that was made,” said Matthew Marrero. “And we are confident that justice is going to be served.”
Allan Marrero is devastated but wants to fight, said Rizio.
“The rollercoaster of these decisions and the emotions that come along with them is frankly just cruel,” she said. “At the same time he’s really strong and he agrees with me that what’s happening is unjust and he wants to appeal.”
