This New Jersey Immigrant Backed Trump for Over 10 Years. Then ICE Detained Him.

“You said you were going after the worst of the worst, but instead you ruined our life."

Every summer, millions of Americans take time off from work for a much-needed holiday. Airports fill with families juggling carry-ons and boarding passes. For most, the experience is tedious but predictable: security lines, flight delays, overpriced coffee. The same was true for New Jersey couple Abdellatif and Sandra Hafraoui, who, in August 2025, were at Newark Airport, on their way to a trip to Fort Myers, Florida, that they had planned with friends. The itinerary was set. Rental cars reserved. An Airbnb booked and paid for.

They didn't make it past the gate.

As the Hafraouis prepared to board their flight out, the couple found themselves confronted by four federal agents, three of whom were plainclothed. They handcuffed Abdellatif and escorted him out of the terminal. What was supposed to be a relaxing summer vacation suddenly turned into a 108-day stint in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility.

"They looked at him and said 'his status is unclear,'" Sandra Hafraoui told NJ.com, which recently published a feature on the couple's case. The agents—one of whom identified herself as being with ICE—refused to disclose where her husband was being taken, only warning her not "to make a scene." 

According to NJ.com's reporting, Hafraoui—who is originally from Morocco—legally immigrated to the United States more than 38 years ago, initially sponsored by an employer. After getting married in 2011, he renewed his authorization through a spousal petition while pursuing permanent residency. The trigger for his arrest was not a criminal charge, but a long-standing "in absentia" removal order issued after he failed to appear at a scheduled immigration hearing before his marriage, HuffPost reports. Such orders are entered when a noncitizen misses a court date and remain enforceable unless later reopened.

Hafraoui alleges that he was never informed of that hearing and that his former attorney—who was later sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 for operating a large-scale immigration fraud scheme—did not notify him of the court hearing. Regardless of these circumstances, immigration procedure demands that an arrest must be made should authorities uncover a discrepancy.

Hafraoui was first taken to the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, where he was processed, according to NJ.com. Sandra described confusing visitation rules and one incident in which a guard shouted at him for briefly reaching across a table during a visit. About two weeks into his detention, Hafraoui said officers pressured him to board a flight and sign away his rights; when he refused, he was placed in solitary confinement for 10 days and later transferred to facilities in Louisiana and Arizona. He was twice placed on charter flights for removal—including one bound for Morocco while his case was still pending—before a New Jersey immigration judge vacated the prior deportation order and he was taken off the plane. It wasn't until November that Hafraoui was released on a $15,000 bond. 

At first glance, Hafraoui's detention may seem routine amid the nearly 600,000 immigration arrests ICE carried out in 2025. Yet many of those arrests did not involve violent offenders. According to analysis by the Cato Institute's David Bier, roughly 93 percent of individuals taken into ICE custody that year had no violent criminal convictions, and about two-thirds had no criminal convictions at all.

While the legal authority for Hafraoui's arrest dates back to 1996 with the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, the scale and intensity of enforcement under the Trump administration's crackdown have drawn scrutiny—particularly given the president's pledge to prioritize deporting the "worst of the worst." Critics point not only to cases involving nonviolent detainees, such as the June 2025 arrest of a military wife with no criminal record and the March 2025 attempted deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but also to more extreme incidents like the February 2025 detention of George Retes, a U.S. Army veteran and American citizen.

Given this context, the Hafraoui case should come as little surprise to critics of President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies. But for Sandra, the detention has carried an extra layer of shock. Both she and her husband have, ironically, been supporters of Trump for over a decade; when speaking to NJ.com, she noted that they had supported him in each of the three previous presidential elections, even attending one of his rallies in Las Vegas. As such, she expected that Trump's immigration enforcement would only target immigrants who were either in the country illegally or who possessed criminal records, not established residents with longstanding community ties like her husband.

"To think we were MAGA," Sandra said, adding that, if she could speak to the president now, she would say, "You said you were going after the worst of the worst, but instead you ruined our life."

For now, Hafraoui remains subject to regular ICE check-ins while wearing an electronic ankle monitor. His attorneys are working to reopen the prior removal order, and an immigration judge will ultimately decide whether the decades-old order is lifted or allowed to stand.