ICE Detains Army Veteran’s Wife During Green-Card Interview

On May 16 (occurred), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers handcuffed Airida Gould, a Lithuanian national married to U.S. Army veteran Mark Gould, and removed her from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office in Chicago. The detention occurred hours after USCIS approved the couple’s marriage petition, which the husband described as the “final step” in their green-card process.

Newsweek

Airida Gould entered the United States in 2000 and has three U.S.–born children. She has worked for two decades as a licensed massage therapist at Libertyville Massage Therapy. The order remained active despite her long-term residence. Marriage-based green cards classify foreign-born spouses of U.S. citizens as “immediate relatives,” exempt from annual visa caps. DHS data show that about 343,000 spouses of U.S. citizens obtained lawful permanent residence in fiscal year 2024, roughly half of all “immediate relative” green cards, and 1.36 million people became lawful permanent residents across all categories that year.

Newsweek

Gould is represented by former Chicago immigration-court judge Carla Espinoza Grcic. Her attorneys have filed an Emergency Motion to Reopen the case with the Board of Immigration Appeals, seeking relief from the decades-old removal order while the green-card application proceeds.

Newsweek

When asked for comment, USCIS directed inquiries to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). An ABC7 report indicated that after initial detention at the Broadview Service Staging Area in Illinois, Gould was transferred to a detention facility in Kentucky. Libertyville Massage Therapy posted on Instagram that Gould’s custody results from the old court order and urged customers to sign a petition on her behalf.

Newsweek

• “Hours later, at that same appointment, in that same building, my wife was handcuffed and taken away by ICE.” — DHS. He

Newsweek