ICE arrested woman at green card interview

Filmmaker has been moved from state to state as officials try to deport her to Brazil.

- MELISSA GOMEZ

TUCKER MAY went public with wife Barbara Gomes Marques May's arrest.

On Sept. 16, Barbara Gomes Marques May and her husband arrived at the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building for what they believed would be the final step in Marques May's process to obtain her green card.

The interview process had gone smoothly, Tucker May recalled. But toward the end, a federal immigration official she had met with said he needed Marques May to follow him so he could photocopy her passport, he recalled. She and her husband believed the trip would be brief and they would be able to leave.

Instead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested Marques May, a 38-year-old Brazilian national who has no criminal record and works as a film director in Los Angeles. She was handcuffed and transferred to the ICE facility in Adelanto in San Bernardino County before being sent to Louisiana. Meanwhile, her husband and her lawyer scrambled to try to stop her deportation.

On Wednesday, Marques May was scheduled to board a 6 a.m. flight to her home country, but her attorney was able to file a motion to reopen her deportation proceedings and keep her on U.S. soil, at least temporarily. As of Thursday, she had been moved to Arizona and was expected to return to California while her deportation proceedings remain open, her attorney said.

“It’s very much an ongoing nightmare,” Tucker May said in an interview last week.

On Saturday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed in a statement that Marques May remained in ICE custody.

According to her attorney, Marcelo Gondim, Marques May arrived in the U.S. in 2018 on a tourist visa. Gondim said she applied for an extension but was denied. She ended up overstaying her visa, he said, and in 2019, the government sent her a notice to appear for a court hearing to begin deportation proceedings.