As Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to arrest people in San Diego during their green card interviews, the final step in a legal pathway, some of the people taken into custody have been spouses of military members and veterans, including one who said he felt “betrayed” after serving for decades in the U.S. Marine Corps.
ICE has repeatedly said these arrests, which began Nov. 12, are for overstaying visas. But multiple immigration attorneys contend that’s never been an issue before, with an exception in federal law for direct relatives of U.S. citizens, including spouses, who are going through the green card process.
“I kind of feel betrayed, to be honest,” said Samuel Shasteen, a retired staff sergeant who said he spent 20 years with the Marines, including two deployments to Afghanistan. “We do everything that we can to protect and serve our country. And then they betray us by treating us like we’ve never done anything.”
Shasteen lost his wife to cancer in 2022. Months later, on a break from work, he says he walked into a coffee shop in downtown San Diego and saw Chanidaphon Sopimpa, who stitched his broken heart back together again.
“It kind of felt like there wasn’t a hole there no more. She just filled a spot, the void that was there,” Shasteen said.
His kids were wary at first, but Shasteen said that quickly changed, and two years later they were married. Originally from Thailand, Sopimpa did overstay her visa, but they’ve been trying to get her green card since the wedding, Shasteen said.
On Nov. 18, they had her final interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Shasteen said “everything seemed great” until the end, when ICE agents came in, handcuffed his wife and took her away as she cried.
“Any other time in U.S. history, it would have been approved,” said Shasteen’s attorney Derek Poulsen. “It really is just a straightforward case.”
“All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, regardless of nationality,” ICE said in a statement in response to previous inquiries on this tactic. “ICE enforces immigration law against all unlawfully present aliens — criminal history is not a prerequisite for enforcement. Being unlawfully present in the United States is itself a violation of federal law. This activity reflects ICE’s renewed focus on executing final orders, addressing public-safety threats, and reducing absconder population consistent with law.”
Shasteen said that after his wife’s arrest, the immigration officer gave him a business card with a QR code.
“She says, ‘Scan this, it will answer all your questions on what you need to do next,’ and I scanned it and it just made me more frustrated because it was just like ICE propaganda,” he said.
“When we do our immigration papers, it asks you if you’re military,” Shasteen continued. “Everything that you upload for documents shows you’re part of the military, or your service. So they know. It’s just — why are they doing it this way? I don’t know.”
His wife was taken to the Otay Mesa Detention Center. When he visits her, Shasteen says he wears a shirt showing his service and has had others come up to him and share that they’re in the military as well. Shasteen said he’s started a support group for the people he’s met in the same situation.
“To me, it kind of feels like a bond that I built with my fellow Marines when I was over in Afghanistan,” he said. “You know, we’re out there to fight the enemy, and we come together no matter where we’re from and fight.”
Immigration attorney William Menard said he has an Australian client who is the wife of a Navy veteran and was arrested in the same manner on the same day.
“He put a lot of work into representing this country, and we did everything the right way,” Menard said. “I could hear him kind of muttering like, you know, ‘I served the country’ and kind of, ‘This is what I get.’”
For them, some good news came Wednesday: an immigration judge ordered his client released on bond. In a support letter to the judge, a friend wrote that she “admires this country, its opportunities, and its core values,” while another wrote that she “couldn’t be prouder to be married to a U.S. veteran and on her path to permanent residency.”
Menard said his client is still eligible for — and they will continue to pursue — her green card.
“The law clearly allows her to file for a green card through a U.S. citizen spouse,” he said.
“You’ve got to wonder what eight days of detention, what purpose that served. I don’t know,” Menard continued, adding that he’s done these interviews for over 12 years and never before seen an arrest like this.
He and Shasteen both said the women have no criminal history.
“I just feel like I lost another wife,” Shasteen said. “It feels horrible, you know, I just felt like they ripped something from me again. And to feel that way is not really how I ever wanted to feel again.”
Shasteen said his wife has a bond hearing next month. As he waits, he said his son has been avoiding the house.
“He texted me to tell me, ‘Dad I’m sorry I haven’t been home,’” Shasteen said. “And he told me what it was reminding him of, which was his mom passing, and he didn’t want to be home because he doesn’t want to be in an empty house without her.”
“One of the hardest parts of this current situation is the parallels I see every time I lay my head down to sleep at night,” his son wrote a letter to support her release. “I lay staring at the ceiling feeling hopeless and praying that she is OK, the same way I did when my mother was in the ICU fighting for her life.”
