“It felt like I was in a nightmare,” Maisa Lopes Eliaser said

NEED TO KNOW

• Maisa Lopes Eliaser, 32, was detained in July and faced deportation after overstaying her tourist visa from 2019
• ICE officers stopped her deportation mid-flight after getting a call
• Eliaser, married to a U.S. soldier, is seeking to reopen her case and apply for a green card

For more than a month, Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo had been waiting for his wife, Maisa Lopes Eliaser, to come home.

Eliaser, 32, had been held in federal immigration custody since July after being detained during an immigration appointment, according to the Associated Press. She was facing deportation to her native country, Brazil, after an immigration judge issued a final order of removal in April. The judge said she had overstayed her tourist visa from when she came to the U.S. in 2019. 

Then, as Eliaser sat aboard a deportation flight bound for Brazil on Wednesday, Aug. 12, everything suddenly changed.

ICE officers received a phone call while the plane was in the air. Eliaser said an officer approached her and asked whether she wanted to continue to Brazil or return to the U.S.

She chose to come home to the U.S.

“Who made the call? We don’t know,” Jaramillo, 43, told the AP. “But someone made the phone call, and then she came back.”

While other detainees were taken off the plane after it arrived in Brazil, Eliaser remained on board and was flown back to Louisiana. She said ICE officers told her she was “famous” because videos about her case had circulated publicly.

For Jaramillo, a U.S. citizen who married Eliaser in 2024, the unexpected turn meant being reunited with his wife after weeks of uncertainty.

After Eliaser was detained on July 8, he took leave from his duties training soldiers at Fort Polk, La., to care for their 5-year-old son.

“This family’s reunion is proof of what’s possible when people set politics aside and do right by those who serve,” Danitza James, who leads the advocacy group Repatriate Our Patriots, told the AP. “We won’t stop until every military family facing detention gets the same chance at justice.”

Even after returning home, Eliaser is still struggling to sleep and remains afraid that she could be sent back to detention, where she was treated like an “animal.”

“It felt like I was in a nightmare,” Eliaser told the AP. “I could not believe what was happening until I returned to my house. Day by day, I’m trying to recover from this trauma.”

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Eliaser has another appointment scheduled for Monday, Aug. 17, as she seeks to reopen her case and move forward with her green card application.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment on Friday, Aug. 14.

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