Allan Dabrio Marrero had been released days earlier from ICE detention after spending 150 days being moved around the country. The pair kissed, they held hands — they wept.
“I’m very happy that my best friend and the love of my life, my husband, is here by my side, and we’re not out of the woods yet,” Matthew said.
Husband’s painful journey through ICE
The pair told amNewYork that they are not out of the woods yet because they still have to apply for Allan’s green card. The original green card application had triggered Allan’s detainment for 150 days. Last November, the pair entered 26 Federal Plaza together, hopeful that Allan would receive permanent residency status despite the risk of deportation after months of ICE seizures there.
Instead, the couple became yet another family impacted by the brutal separation policy. It did not matter that Allan had gone by the book; he found himself in ICE custody and subject to brutal conditions with numerous other detainees.
“At that point, I had been here for over a decade, legally here and everything. So I didn’t fear anything being out of the ordinary, not until the agent said that I had an order of removal,” Allan recalled. “They put me in the room upstairs; there were several of us in there that they detained in the building. We were just on the floor with these twin-size mattress-type things, foil for covering — it was very cold. The bathrooms were in there in the open, and I just broke down and cried. I absolutely just sobbed when I was up there.”
From there, Allan was moved from detention center to detention center, in what he described as horrendous conditions. He detailed the guards there as callous, who would take his commissary away at the drop of a hat. He said he often would not even know which detention center he was taken to.
“After getting on a plane, after getting on a bus, and we got there, and through processing, it was very dark, it was very late. Mostly, all the lights were off, and they were like, welcome to Alligator Alcatraz,” Allan said. “I was just like, no way. This is not happening to me right now.”
How he was freed from ICE
May 5 not only served as a welcome-home celebration from friends and fellow churchgoers, but also marked the first time Allan met his attorney in person: Alexandra Rizio from Make the Road New York. Rizio and both Matthew and Allan welled up with tears.
“That’s the first time we’ve met in person, like I had only seen him through a screen. I had only ever met him in a prison uniform over Zoom,” Rizio said. “Allan was the last thing I thought of when I would go to bed at night. He was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning.”
His friends and family believed he would be released in January, when a judge found he was not a threat to the community or a flight risk and ordered him released on bail. However, DHS defied the order and refused to set him free, resulting in an even longer legal battle.
Rizio told amNewYork that after she attempted to post bond several times, she filed a federal complaint in April, alleging that ICE’s refusal to accept and process the bond was a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.
“Then we heard from ICE that they were going to accept and process the bond,” Rizio said. He was ultimately released on April 30.
The lasting impact
On Tuesday, the Marreros faced the press and were welcomed by a slew of elected officials and advocates, including Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, President of the New York Immigration Coalition Murad Awawdeh, and others. Standing in Middle Church, the parishioners stood on the stage behind the married couple, weeping with joy themselves and holding signs reading “Allan is free” and “Free them all.”
Matthew and Allan Marrero say they will have to live with the horrors of ICE detention for the rest of their lives, but they also want to serve as a beacon of hope for other families who have gone through similar experiences. Yet it is not just they who live with the heartbreak.
Rev. Amanda Hambrick, who preaches out of Middle Collegiate Church, attempted to attend the green card hearing in November alongside them but was denied access by the federal agents, something that weighs heavy on her.
“I was thinking about that specifically, how they didn’t let me in their actual room with them,” Hambrick said. “I’m reflecting on what I would do again…it’s just also a very, very small piece of the trauma that I am reliving compared to what Allan must be reliving.”
Church leader Rev. Jacqueline Lewis, also welled with tears as she looked back on the 150-day journey. She herself served as both a guiding light and a shoulder to cry on for those dealing with Allan’s detainment. Despite all the sorrow, she shared that she is looking to the future with hope.
“I’m wired for hope,” Lewis said. “Now’s the time to get people out to the midterms, and now’s the time for everyone to know this is real and it is coming for all of us, unless we stand up together.”
