Local grandmother held by ICE over $25 bad check from 10 years ago

LINCOLN COUNTY, Mo. (First Alert 4) -- On their 9-acre farm outside Troy, Missouri, veteran Jim Brown, all alone, cares for the horses he and his wife love dearly.

“She likes the country lifestyle,” said Brown.

A lifestyle he now has to imagine without her, as she faces deportation, even though she is in the country legally.

“It’s just not fair that you’re telling me I have to be a bachelor the rest of my life because of some stupid policy,” he said.

Jim, a veteran, and Donna, a full-time health care worker, married about eight years ago. A simple life of faith, family and friends. Jim says she’s the first to help others in times of trouble.

“Donna is there for the underdog,” he said.

But now she’s the one fighting for her freedom.

“My wife is not a criminal,” he said.

Donna, an Irish citizen, came to the U.S. when she was just 11 years old. She is a legal resident alien, or green card carrier, but not a U.S. citizen.

“It takes about 10, 15 years, and it’s very expensive,” Brown said.

All was well, Jim says, until July. While in Ireland for a family funeral, on the way back at customs in Chicago, Donna was arrested.

“You don’t arrest 58-year-old grandmothers. It’s just wrong. She hasn’t committed crimes. You just don’t do that,” he said.

She has now spent more than 30 days behind bars at a county jail in Kentucky. The U.S. government is attempting to deport her. He believes she very well may get deported.

“It’s egregious that we have allowed a government to allow this to happen,” he said.

So why is it being allowed?

Ten years ago, Donna wrote a bad check, charging documents say, for $25. She was a single mom.

She paid it back and got probation. But Jim says the U.S. government is suddenly arguing that was a crime of moral turpitude.

The U.S. government says that’s a term used in the immigration context that has no statutory definition, but courts have held that moral turpitude “refers generally to conduct that shocks the public conscience as being inherently base, vile or depraved, contrary to the rules of morality.”

“I think it’s nonsense. I think it’s a blanket thing to catch everybody, to fill beds,” Brown said.

A direct result, he says, of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies.

“They signed a stupid bill that is torturing innocent people, and that’s the problem,” he said.

“She was unlawfully detained by ICE,” Brown said.

Now, he spends countless hours on the phone, trying to reach his wife, protest what he calls “deplorable” conditions in jail, and get her released.

“She’s been in this country 47 years, is married, with five kids and five grandkids, and you’re telling me she’s a flight risk?” he said.

Contacts with his representatives, he says, have gone nowhere.

Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office, in a letter, said it was a federal issue only.

“I want somebody to have the guts and the fortitude to stand up and say, ‘You know what? This is wrong,’” Brown said.

“You fought for these freedoms that are being taken away from her. Yep. Twenty years served. And it’s crazy that this is happening. It’s just crazy that this is even allowed in this country. That’s the problem. It shouldn’t even be thought that this should be OK,” he said.

And Jim says he won’t stop fighting for her.

He hopes she will soon be free.

Over the last several days, First Alert 4 Investigates has tried reaching U.S. senators from Missouri Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley, ICE and the White House. We have not heard back from any of them about Donna’s situation.

In the meantime, there is a GoFundMe for Donna. Jim says he knows other people are in similar fights, and they are planning to donate a portion of the money to another person’s immigration legal battles.

You can find that GoFundMe here.