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The Democrats’ newest victims: People who overstay their visas
By Andrea Widburg
Nov. 28, 2025
The Baby Boomer college-educated leftist friends who populate my Facebook have found a new cause célèbre: Foreigners married to Americans being arrested for expired visas. My old friends are outraged. I’m not, because I believe in the rule of law.
Whether an American meets a foreign citizen at home or abroad, if the two get married and want to live in America, that foreign citizen does not automatically become a legal resident. Instead, there’s a process. Whether they’re in America or still living abroad, they still need to prove that it’s a real marriage to earn that green card.
This cannot be done simply by waving around a marriage certificate. The foreign applicant needs to prove the couple really has a life together: joint finances, a photographic or correspondence record of a life together, friends and family testifying to the relationship, etc.
If you’re a little older, think of the 1990 movie Green Card, about a fake marriage that turned into love as they tried to prepare for the interview process. In the movie, they failed the test, so he got deported, but it was clear he’d come back the legal way.
Yes, it’s a pain, but the point is that the American government rightly cares deeply about whether people are entering into legitimate marriages or faking marriages to get into America. The process is a funnel to determine legitimacy.
Democrats, however, dislike having any legal process get in the way of their goals. Thus, the loyal rank and file have been rending their garments over two recent stories about people who aren’t violent criminals but whom ICE nevertheless detained.
The main story that has triggered weeping and wailing is from the New York Times. The title and subtitle set the tone:
Green Card Interviews End in Handcuffs for Spouses of U.S. Citizens
Agents are arresting foreign-born spouses when they report for the final step to obtain permanent residency, and charging them with visa violations that could result in deportation.
You’re obviously meant to believe that these people have done nothing wrong and are being targeted solely because Trump is a racist xenophobe, and, indeed, that’s the clear tenor of the first several paragraphs. Thus, we learn about two mixed couples (each with an American spouse and a foreign-born spouse, and one with a young baby) who went to a federal building for the green card interview, only to have the foreign spouse handcuffed and carted off to an immigration detention center.
The message is clear: It’s pure Nazi stuff. This is Hitler rounding up the Jews. Except, of course, it’s not. Read past all the emotional glurge, and, eventually, the truth comes out:
In every case, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the applicants that they had overstayed tourist or business visas. An arrest warrant, reviewed by The New York Times, states that “there is probable cause to believe” that the named spouse is “removable from the United States.”
“Apprehensions at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices may occur if individuals are identified as having outstanding warrants; being subject to court-issued removal orders; or having committed fraud, crimes or other violations of immigration law while in the United States,” said Matthew J. Tragesser, an agency spokesman, noting that the arrests were typically carried out by ICE.
In other words, the detainees broke the law and got caught. It’s not pretty, but this is how the rule of law works, even if you’re a nice person, not a stone-cold killer.
The defense in each case is that the foreigners were going through the process when they overstayed their visas. However, that doesn’t vitiate America’s right to deport visa overstays. After all, the rule of law works only if it’s applied. And while it’s true, as the New York Times essay argues, that the 1986 immigration reform law said that married people wouldn’t lose their place in line for a green card if their visa expired, the law didn’t say that gave them carte blanche to remain in America during the process.
The other story that’s outraged Democrats is that a “law-abiding college student” was deported while on the way home for Thanksgiving. Except Any Lucia Lopez Belloz wasn’t law-abiding at all. Instead, near the bottom of the linked article, you get this piece of information:
In a statement to ABC News' Boston affiliate WCVB, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Lopez Belloza had a removal order since 2015 and confirmed her removal.
That Lopez Belloza has been living here illegally for a decade doesn’t matter to Democrats. For them, once you make it across the border, you’re a de facto legal resident no matter the law.
In the same vein, another Facebook friend complained that legal residents are getting picked up by ICE. When I politely asked for further details, she acknowledged that, well, you know, they weren’t actually carrying with them proof that they’re legal residents.
I gently reminded her that, if you’re a legal resident, you’re required by law to have that proof on you at all times. It’s not rocket science. My mother never left home without her green card—just as I never leave the house, and certainly never drive my car, without my driver’s license.
There will always be sad stories of nice people who thoughtlessly or intentionally broke laws that they didn’t think were that important. But sad stories cannot be allowed to nullify our laws. If Democrats want to change the laws, there’s a process for that, and that process isn’t to cry bitterly when lawbreakers get caught.
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Link:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...eir_visas.html
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