ICE Detains 29-Year-Old Briton at Green Card Interview Over 2011 Removal Order

Q: Why did a routine green card interview suddenly turn into an unexpected ICE detention for a father of twins?

It turned into an ICE detention because the interview exposed that Connor Read was not just a green card applicant, but someone with a final removal order and a criminal record that made him an active immigration-enforcement target. Read had been trying to adjust his status through his U.S. citizen wife’s I-130 petition and a green card application. But ICE said he had already been ordered removed by an immigration judge in 2011 after problems tied to his visa status, and that he later lost DACA protection because of convictions including possession of narcotic equipment, possession of liquor and resisting an officer. In ICE’s view, those factors meant he was removable and eligible for arrest when authorities located him. That is why the appointment became risky. A green card interview with USCIS is meant to assess eligibility for lawful permanent residence, but it does not erase an existing final removal order. Unless a stay of removal or reopening order is granted, ICE can still execute that order. Read’s appearance at the scheduled interview effectively gave immigration authorities a known time and place to detain him. The same-day approval of the I-130 may help his lawyers ask the court to reopen his case, but it did not automatically protect him from detention or deportation. That is the central reason a routine appointment suddenly became an arrest: his pending family-based case existed alongside unresolved enforcement history that ICE was still free to act on.

3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jul 24

Connor Read, 29, has spent more than six weeks in ICE custody after agents arrested him on 3 June during a green card interview in Tampa.
ICE said the British-born father of two faces deportation because a 2011 removal order remains in force and because of convictions for narcotic equipment possession, liquor possession and resisting an officer.
Read was brought to the US at age 9, later received Daca protection as a teenager, but lost the ability to renew it after the narcotics-related charge, according to the report.
After eight days in a Florida jail, he was transferred to a Louisiana detention center while he appeals the final removal order, a process his wife was told could take up to six months.
The case highlights the Trump administration's push to prioritize immigrants with criminal records, with ICE saying nearly 70% of its arrests involve people charged with or convicted of crimes in the US.