Marcel Rosa could only watch as federal agents escorted his wife, Jemmy Jimenez Rosa, away at Boston Logan International Airport on Aug. 11. Their three young daughters clung to him, crying in fear and confusion.
What was supposed to be the joyful end of a family vacation to Mexico with more than 30 relatives turned into a nightmare. Jimenez Rosa, a legal permanent resident and mother of four U.S. citizens, was detained over what her attorney believes was a decades-old marijuana charge for personal use — an offense that is no longer a crime in Massachusetts.
“I was just like, ‘Girls, we might never see your mother again in this country,’” said Rosa, 38. “I looked over to the officer and said, ‘Am I telling the truth?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that could be possible.’”
Neither U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nor the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts would respond to questions from MassLive, the family’s attorney Todd Pomerleau, or Boston 25. ICE later hinted in an email that the detention was tied to the marijuana charge, just before her release on Aug. 20.
During those 10 days, the 42-year-old was shuffled between detention facilities — including one designed only for men — from Massachusetts to Maine. She was twice hospitalized due to lack of proper medical care for diabetes, asthma, and other serious health issues, her attorney said.
Her husband, a former Department of Homeland Security employee raised in Boston, fought to track her location and push for her release in court.
“Jemmy’s detention was brutal and capricious and never should have happened,” said state Sen. Paul Feeney, D-Bristol/Norfolk, who was present when she was reunited with her family. He called her treatment “unjust” and “un-American.”
When ICE finally released Jimenez Rosa, it was at night, in the rain, outside the Burlington detention facility. With no phone and nowhere to go, she ended up at The Cheesecake Factory in the Burlington Mall begging strangers for help.
Detention tied to decades-old case
The family had landed at Logan on Aug. 11 at 6:30 p.m. after their trip. When presenting passports and Jimenez Rosa’s Green Card, which doesn’t expire until 2035, she was told to go to a secondary screening room.
Federal agents vaguely referenced a marijuana possession case from when she was in college 22 years ago but never confirmed the exact charge. Her husband and attorney later pieced it together: in 2003, at age 20, she was arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana. She pleaded guilty, served probation, and has had no criminal record since. The case was sealed more than a decade ago.
Pomerleau said the charge should not have been accessible to immigration authorities at all. “They would have had no access to these records unless somebody illegally handed them over,” he said.
Struggles in custody
Her health quickly deteriorated. Within hours of detention, she was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital. Later, she was moved between facilities without notice to her family, including the Cumberland County Jail in Maine. There, she described rats in the walls, leaking ceilings, and constant clanging doors that made it impossible to sleep.
At one point, when Rosa asked officials about his wife’s medical care, an agent replied, “We’ll notify next of kin if she dies.”
Attorneys filed emergency petitions to free her, and on Aug. 20, a Roxbury judge vacated her old marijuana conviction. Hours later, ICE released her, though not without more confusion. Her family only found her after she borrowed a stranger’s phone at the mall.
“She was disheveled, crying, and trembling. She held her kids and just sobbed for 45 minutes,” Pomerleau said.
Lingering trauma
Back home in Canton, Jimenez Rosa continues to struggle. She cries throughout the day, her husband said, and the family is seeking psychiatric care and full medical evaluations.
A GoFundMe has raised more than $14,000 toward the family’s legal expenses, with a goal of $16,000.
Rosa now warns other families with Green Cards about traveling. “You’re better off taking that loss than getting arrested and being in the same situation my wife went through,” he said.
Sen. Feeney condemned the ordeal: “Locking up a legally present Massachusetts mom, who has been here legally since she was 9 years old, and taking her away from her husband and young kids, one of whom was celebrating a birthday, does not make our community safer.”
Pomerleau says the fight isn’t over. “It is a big deal when law enforcement violates the law under the guise of enforcing it … The rule of law needs to be respected.”
