Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales was arrested on Sunday. ICE won’t release her despite extensive documentation of her citizenship, her attorneys told HuffPost.
A Maryland woman has spent days in immigration detention despite being a U.S. citizen with a valid birth certificate and other documentation — documents ICE claims aren’t authentic, her attorneys told HuffPost Thursday.
Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, 22, was born in Maryland and spent time in Mexico before coming back to the United States, Victoria Slatton, one of the attorneys working on her case, told HuffPost in a phone call Thursday. Slatton has worked to draw attention to Diaz Morales’ case, including in several TikTok videos.
Shirley Elvirita, Diaz Morales’ 17-year-old sister, told HuffPost over the phone Thursday night that she, her sister and their father were doing laundry in Baltimore on Sunday, and afterwards, the sisters went to pick up some Taco Bell. After getting back on the road, Shirley recalled, they were surrounded by several vehicles filled with law enforcement personnel, who pulled them over. Officers ignored Shirley’s questions and took her sister “forcefully” into one of the vans. They told Shirley they would let her go – but not her sister.
A person who is physically present in the country is either there legally or illegally. It seems you object to my phrasing because, as a natural born citizen, there shouldn’t have been a need to distinguish if she was there legally or not. But sadly it was in question, shouldn’t have been but was.