It is every American’s nightmare: being locked up in your own country, accused of being a foreigner, with your birth certificate ignored. For Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales, 22, that nightmare lasted 25 days.

Díaz Morales walked out of a detention center in New Jersey on Wednesday, reuniting with her son after a harrowing ordeal that began with a taco run in Baltimore. Despite her lawyers presenting a Maryland birth certificate and hospital records complete with her infant footprints, ICE maintained she was a Mexican national.

The bureaucratic Wall

The case exposes the terrifying reach of the current immigration crackdown. ICE agents arrested her on December 14, ignoring her protests of citizenship. She was shuffled through five detention centers across three states, effectively lost in the system.

• The Confusion: DHS claims she admitted to being Mexican when stopped at the border in 2023. Her lawyers explain she had lived in Mexico as a child and used her mother's surname, leading to record discrepancies.
• The Evidence: "She was born in Laurel, Maryland. It is an indisputable fact," argued her attorney, Victoria Slatton. It took a federal judge’s intervention to halt her deportation.
• Not Over Yet: Chillingly, the government has not dropped the deportation case. Díaz Morales is free, but she is still fighting to prove she belongs in the country of her birth.

A Warning to All

"If they can do this to a citizen with papers, what chance does anyone else have?" Slatton asked. The incident confirms fears that in the rush to deport millions, the constitutional rights of citizens are becoming collateral damage.