NEWS / Maryland woman detained by ICE despite having US birth certificate

Maryland resident Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales was detained by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite reportedly possessing a birth certificate issued by the State of Maryland and other corroborating evidence of US citizenship. She has now been released but remains under ICE surveillance wearing an ankle monitor.

Diaz Morales was originally detained by ICE on December 14th, 2025, at a Taco Bell in Baltimore, Maryland. She was then in custody for 25 days at ICE facilities in Louisiana, Texas, and New Jersey. At one point, she was reportedly forced to sleep on the floor.

The woman’s legal team provided multiple documents proving her US citizenship, including a Maryland birth certificate, a corroborating hospital record from Laurel Regional Hospital, affidavits from individuals present at her birth, elementary school records, and Maryland public health immunization records, according to WMAR.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Diaz Morales illegally entered the United States in Arizona in 2023. Her lawyers claim she was incorrectly processed as a non-citizen of the United States.

We're a little exhausted with playing the 'if you give a mouse a cookie' game with the government because every time you give a new piece of evidence, they're seemingly happy to accept it—and then give us exactly zero information on whether this moves the needle, on whether this gets us closer to a resolution date, on whether they're even going to stop saying that we lied about this case,” Zachary Perez, a member of Diaz Morales’s legal team, was quoted by CBS as stating. “The repeated times that she's had to express herself and her truth… is a level of absurd that I've never had to see in my practice.”

Perez also stressed that it is unreasonable to expect individuals to constantly carry proof of citizenship. Diaz Morales is currently reportedly trying to obtain a US passport as additional proof of her US citizenship.

If you need to retrieve a birth certificate to get it apostilled or authenticated for use abroad, feel free to contact us via e-mail at info@apostille.us or by phone at (212) 233-7061. You can also place an order on our website.