The wife of a US soldier who spent more than a month in federal immigration detention said she is back home after officers removed her from a deportation flight to Brazil. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
Earlier this month, The Associated Press highlighted Maisa Lopes Eliaser as one of dozens of spouses or parents of US troops who had been detained after President Donald Trump's administration rolled back protections for military families amid its push for mass deportations. Following the AP's reporting, a group of Congressional Democrats launched an investigation into deportations of military service members and their families.
Eliaser was placed on a deportation flight Wednesday to her native Brazil when US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on the plane received a phone call about her mid-flight, she told the AP. She said she was then asked by an ICE officer whether she wanted to continue on to Brazil or go back to the US.
"Who made the call? We don't know," said Eliaser's husband, Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo. "But someone made the phone call, and then she came back."
While other detainees were led off the plane in Brazil, Eliaser stayed on board and returned to Louisiana. ICE officers told her that she was "famous" because there were videos about her case, she said.
The US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DHS previously told AP that Eliaser, 32, had been issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on April 15, after overstaying the tourist visa she used to enter the US in 2019.
Jaramillo, a 43-year-old aviation operations specialist who has served in the Army for more than a decade, took leave of his duties training soldiers in Fort Polk, Louisiana, to care for Eliaser.