VivirLatino

In yet another case of misogyny playing out against immigrant women, a man recently dressed up as a U.S. immigration agent and “deported” the wife of a family member.

Witnesses said Gregory Denny, 37, turned up at the Hemet home of Craig Hibbard, a distant cousin, on Jan. 15, wearing a fake badge and a shirt imprinted with “U.S. Federal Agent,” said Lt. Duane Wisehart of the Hemet Police Department.

Displaying what turned out to be a pellet gun, Denny reportedly handcuffed Hibbard’s wife, Cherrie Belle, and told the couple she was being deported, Wisehart said. Denny allegedly drove Belle, 28, to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection station in Murrieta.

When he was told there was no warrant for her in the computer system, he apparently returned to the couple’s house in the 1200 block of Stepstone Court and instructed her husband to purchase a ticket for her online to her home country, Wisehart said.

Police were told Denny drove the woman to the international airport in San Diego, where he flashed his fake badge to get through security. He allegedly escorted her to the departure gate, uncuffed her and watched her board a plane to San Francisco en route to Manila, where she remains.

When Hibbard reported the matter to authorities three days later, police reached Denny by telephone and asked him to come into the station for questioning. Denny arrived wearing the “U.S. Federal Agent” shirt, identified himself to police as a U.S. marshal and verified the family’s general account of what happened, Wisehart said.

Although this seems sorta out there (some random family member deporting another), when you get to the bottom of the article there is a little clue to what may be going on in this case:

Updated at 2:48 p.m.: “There is no clear motive except that he felt he was doing a ‘favor’ for the family, and that they, the family, wanted her deported,” Wisehart said.

Hibbard told the Press-Enterprise that his wife is five months’ pregnant and that they have been married for three years. He said she canceled her green card last year in a dispute with him, saying she wanted to go home to the Philippines.

The couple later reconciled and she tried to renew her immigration documents, the paper reported. Hibbard said they were told by immigration officials in San Bernardino that she was allowed to remain in the U.S. while her application was being processed.

This would not be the first time a man used a fake agent to scare, dominate and harass his wife. And unfortunately, because US immigration officials often do not act with any sort of consistency or by any sort of rule of law–and people who are undocumented can be arrested and deported even when they are the victims of crimes, women who find themselves in the middle of terrorizing like this have little to no actions they can take to protect or defend themselves.

It’s spousal abuse that they are legally required to just take.

After reading about the LGBT workshop that mala went to, and how mainstream LGBT activists are often reluctant to take on immigration because “illegals” (undocumented communities) don’t deserve rights when “citizens” (LGBT citizens) aren’t getting them–I have to wonder what the response to this sort of marriage based violence would be.

The abuse of a woman through the citizenship privileges marriage brings a man is not unusual or even rare. The stories of the violence and control immigrant women are subjected to because they are not legalized citizens but their spouse is runs rife through immigrant communities. Husbands hide passports from women, refuse to let them renew their papers, threaten to call immigration on them, and then when all is said and done, the men keep the kids in custody battles because women are so easily deported.

Marriage does not solve much for far to many immigrant women and unfortunately, in our patriarchal world, often makes the problem even worse. So can marriage really be the only answer, or the end answer, for LGBT immigrant justice activists?

And, as Mamita points out, doesn’t even contemplating doing so seem a little dangerous? For a whole slew of reasons?