MIRAMAR, Fla. \u2014 Brandon Garrison is fighting to keep his wife Gabriela Sousa in the United States. <\/p>\n
In 2023, Sousa came to the U.S. from Venezuela under something called Humanitarian Parole, essentially allowing her to stay in the country for two years.<\/p>\n
In that time, she met Garrison and fell in love, but time was ticking.<\/p>\n
They decided to get married before her humanitarian parole end date, hoping to start the process to change status and stay in the U.S. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe very next day after we got married, I tried to start the process to adjust status,\u201d said Garrison. \u201cThe plan was to do it before her parole expired.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her parole expired two days after they got married, which meant she was officially in the United States illegally. <\/p>\n
Immigration attorney Saman Movassaghi Gonzalez says the marriage itself isn\u2019t enough to obtain legal status. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, getting married to a United States citizen does not give you any legal rights to continue to stay in the United States if you are not on your own, what we call admissible means,\u201d said Gonzalez. \u201cIf you, on your own, do not have any roadblocks into adjusting your status in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
Months after their wedding, the couple had a dispute and Sousa was arrested for misdemeanor battery against Garrison, something he said was a misunderstanding. <\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially the state attorney agreed to no file the charges,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
According to court records, the case was dismissed, but Sousa was then put into ICE detention. <\/p>\n
Garrison said for the last five months she has been shuffled around the state, currently in a Baker County facility outside of Jacksonville. <\/p>\n
He has only been able to see her on video call. <\/p>\n
Gonzalez says she will likely need to voluntarily leave the country, which means she would face a three-year penalty before being allowed to apply for status again. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe see a lot of these cases where we are encouraging them to take the voluntary departure so that they do not have a removal order,\u201d said Gonzalez. <\/p>\n
If she applies for asylum and loses, she could face a ten-year penalty. <\/p>\n
The couple must make a decision in the next few weeks. <\/p>\n
Garrison said they may move to Colombia to stay together and wait it out. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, what choice do I got?\u201d said Garrison. \u201cI don\u2019t have any. I tried everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point, only ICE can determine if Sousa can stay. <\/p>\n
\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIRAMAR, Fla. \u2014 Brandon Garrison is fighting to keep his wife Gabriela Sousa in the United States. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-194354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}