Couple Fled To America To Practice Their Faith. Wife Became A Citizen 9 Days After ICE Arrested Husband.

By Gwynne Hogan, The City

July 7, 2025

On a recent morning inside an ornate federal courtroom in downtown Brooklyn, Maria became a naturalized citizen.

She was one of 100 people from 40 different countries taking the oath of allegiance to uphold the U.S. Constitution. For the 49-year-old who immigrated from Indonesia in her early twenties, it was the culmination of more than two decades of life in this country.

The federal judge overseeing the ceremony, Pamela Chen, told the crowd she herself was a daughter of Chinese immigrants and understood both the joy and the struggles that immigrating to America can bring.

“We are stronger as a nation when we remember our shared history as a nation of immigrants,” Chen said.

“Like fabric,” she went on, “cross-stitching makes us stronger.”

And so, the judge continued, “as a child of immigrants, I encourage you to dream big for yourself and your family.”

But for Maria, what might have been a joyful experience was instead one tinged with sadness. While she’d finally secured citizenship in her adoptive country — one where she’d given birth to two U.S. citizen children and worked her way up to a job in accounting — nine days earlier, her husband’s two-decade journey had brought him into the dank interior of an ICE detention cell.

THE CITY is withholding Maria’s full name and all but the first initial of her husband’s name — S. — so as not to impact the deportation effort against him.

“Today is a mixed emotion,” Maria said, speaking shortly after her naturalization ceremony on a bench in Cadman Plaza Park outside the courthouse. “I was reminding myself, thank God, not so many people can get this opportunity. Everyone wants to live here, wants to become a U.S. citizen.”

Maria’s long-awaited naturalization might have been an important step towards reopening S.’s immigration case and another opportunity for him to fight for the right to remain in the United States with his wife and two citizen children, who are now 14 and 18.

“I told my husband, ‘Just be patient, when we get this citizenship, then we can get your case moving,’ but unfortunately,y before that…” she said, as her voice trailed off.

‘Hungry for God and Willing to Serve’

Maria and S. moved to Queens from Surabaya in 2001, in the wake of massive riots targeting ethnic Chinese enclaves that spread out to cities all across the Indonesian archipelago, killing hundreds of people. Maria and S. are both Christians of Chinese descent, and the mob violence there also targeted churches.

“They don’t like Christians. They don’t like Chinese. That’s why when we came here,” Maria recalled, saying the couple saved up enough money for her to move to the United States and move in with a friend in Elmhurst, Queens first, before S. joined her several months later. The couple rented a room together and both worked at restaurants for most of their careers.

The couple could only afford one asylum application at a time so S. applied first, going through a years-long process before he was denied in 2007. Maria then began her application when she was pregnant with the couple’s second child. Her application was successful and she began the process of becoming a naturalized citizen while her husband fell into the shadows, one of more than an estimated 800,000 undocumented New Yorkers.

Life carried on, with Maria working her way into an accounting job. S. went from restaurant work to online selling and working in a warehouse. Their two kids grew up in Woodside. Their Pentecostal church in Elmhurst became a home away from home. The whole family attended services multiple days a week, with S. working as an usher and Maria as a greeter.

“This guy is an integral part of the family,” said their pastor, who declined to be named, concerned about consequences for the church community. She said S. was always willing to do whatever the church needed, often cleaning and organizing events, with a boisterous presence that made the time together fun. “He’s truly, genuinely hungry for God. He’s willing to serve.”

‘Don’t Worry, Come Back, See You Later’

For years, regular check-ins with immigration officials loomed over the family. At first S. had to go every few months, reporting to 26 Federal Plaza to assure the agency he was living a law-abiding life. Eventually that receded to just once a year, but if the family ever wanted to leave the state, S. had to first report to 26 Federal Plaza to let the agency know, which he did dutifully, Maria said.

His most recent annual appointment was in March, his first check-in under the second term of President Donald Trump, who’s pledged a mass deportation campaign the likes of which the country has never before seen.

At his March appointment, S. was told to return in three months, with his next check up date set for June 16. The couple consulted with a lawyer who told them “just be prepared.”

Last month, when the time came, “we were not thinking anything bad, even in the morning he just woke me up and said ‘I’m going.’” Maria recalled.

“‘OK, don’t worry, come back, see you later,’” she’d replied. “How can we be prepared? We cannot prepare anything. They are the ones who have to prepare what to do next, right?”

Maria and her daughter Natalie outside Cadman Plaza after Maria’s citizenship ceremony. Maria became a citizen a week after her husband was detained by ICE at a check in. June 25, 2025 Credit: Gwynne Hogan/ THE CITY

The day before S.’s appointment was Father’s Day. The family ate dinner together. After dinner Maria’s 14-year-old daughter Natalie said she snuck a quiet moment with her father.

“I told him I’m really thankful you’re here,” she recalled. But still, she wasn’t dwelling on his upcoming appointment, Natalie told THE CITY. “I tried not to think about it. I left it in the back of my mind.”

‘Treated Like a Criminal’

But on the day of S.’s ICE check-in, Maria felt nauseous. Her husband once again reported to 26 Federal Plaza waiting with dozens of others in the early morning. It’s one of several locations where immigrants in various stages of deportation proceedings are required to report to ICE periodically.

Across the street from 26 Federal Plaza another such office sits, a location that became a mass arrest site on several recent days in May as people appearing for check-ins got handcuffed and led out of the building. Unlike that office, arrests at 26 Federal Plaza ICE check-ins aren’t visible; instead people enter the building and simply never leave on their own accord.

The couple text-messaged throughout the morning, with S. telling Maria the office was crowded and it seemed to be taking longer than usual. Then he told her he was getting taken to the ninth floor. “If they need to review more, then they will send you to the ninth floor,” S. told Maria. At 12:30 p.m. she got another update, “only two people left.”

Maria, in a panic, texted a friend who replied, trying to calm her down: “Don’t worry. You will be a citizen, and you have citizen children. Don’t worry.”

S. texted again minutes after that, to tell Maria he was being arrested and to alert the family’s pastor and his lawyer. It was Natalie’s last day of freshman year in high school.

“I was so happy to be done,” Natalie said before she got the call from her older brother telling her that “Mom needs the support right now.”

S. spent two days and one night inside 26 Federal Plaza before being moved to Delaney Hall, the new ICE lock-up in Newark, New Jersey.

He called Maria shortly after arriving in Jersey to lament the conditions he’d been jailed under in Manhattan.

“He was crying when he called me. He said he’s being treated like a criminal, this is in my lowest part of life,” Maria recalled. S. told Maria 18 people had been locked in one small room inside of 26 Federal Plaza, sleeping on the floor with no showers or way to brush their teeth and given granola bars and cookies twice a day.

“It’s not human,” Maria said.

Because 26 Federal Plaza isn’t officially a detention center, ICE has turned away members of Congress seeking to oversee the conditions prisoners are held in there — even as the building has become the centralized location where dozens of people arrested by ICE in New York City each day are detained. As the number of ICE arrests has soared in recent weeks, some people have been held there for days as the agency figures out where to send them next.

‘No Mercy’

In the month and a half since S.’s arrest, his son graduated high school.

“We say he was there in spirit,” Natalie said, with S. calling during a celebratory lunch. “He felt really happy, but I could feel the sadness in his voice that he wasn’t able to be there.”

In his absence, Natalie said she’s been spending more time than before at church.

“I felt more motivated to devote myself to helping out in the church since that’s what my dad did,” she said, though “without my dad’s presence it just feels kind of off.”

Still, she added, “I know he’ll eventually come back, I just have a lot of faith.”

Maria, for her part, has been praying and fasting for her husband’s release. Her lawyer filed a stay of removal to try to keep ICE from carrying out S.’s deportation, while friends and family have reached out to elected officials to try to drum up support.

S’s arrest shocked the tight-knit church community, who had not imagined Trump’s deportation agenda would strike so close to home.

“He’s going to deport all the criminals. Of course, we like that, that our community is going to be safer. Everyone is going to follow the rule, the law,” the pastor said.

“Who knew they were going to deport regular people, this is crazy,” she added. “We love this country because this is a country that obeys the rule of law. At the same time, how can they just separate families? It feels like there’s no mercy.”

Marie and Natalie and their pastor were finally able to see S. on Saturday for the first time, after getting turned away a week earlier following a lock down in the aftermath of a protest at the facility over the dismal conditions there, during which four people reportedly escaped.

It was an emotional reunion, Maria said, noting her husband seemed deflated beyond recognition.

“My husband is very outspoken, very outgoing,” she said, but now “he looks so humble.”

Though Maria hadn’t been able to vote last fall, she said she understood Trump’s stated desire to deport people who committed crimes here.

She believes the president might not know that those efforts had now ensnared her own family, who fled persecution in their home country to be able to practice Christianity in peace here.

“I also want this country to be safe and I understand Trump wants to do this kind of thing to protect the citizens of the United States,” Maria said, but, she added, “It’s just extreme. It’s too extreme.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.