Judge confirms Prince George's County woman is a U.S. citizen
After 25 days in ICE custody and transfers through four states, a Prince George's County woman won a ruling confirming she was born in Laurel and is a U.S. citizen.
A Prince George’s County woman spent weeks in immigration custody and had to assemble birth records and other documents before a Maryland judge confirmed she is a U.S. citizen. The case of Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales ended with her no longer subject to deportation proceedings, after federal court review settled what her lawyers said should never have been in doubt.
ICE detained Diaz Morales in Baltimore on Dec. 14, 2025, as she left a Taco Bell with family members. Her lawyers said she was held for 25 days and moved through detention facilities in Maryland, Louisiana, Texas and New Jersey before being released in January 2026 with an ankle monitor. By the time she emerged, her legal team had already supplied her Maryland birth certificate, immunization records and other corroborating documents.
Her attorneys said Johns Hopkins-associated medical experts reviewed the birth certificate and related records and concluded she was born in Laurel, Maryland, on Oct. 18, 2003. The case also turned on identity records: court filings used the name Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, while ICE records reportedly used Dulce Consuelo Madrigal Diaz. DHS said she was a Mexican citizen who entered near Lukeville, Arizona, on Oct. 20, 2023, then failed to appear for an immigration hearing and was later placed under a final removal order dated Jan. 31, 2025.
Diaz Morales’s lawyers said those immigration steps were the result of an administrative mistake after she entered the country during an emergency without documentation. They argued the government had put the burden on a U.S. citizen to prove citizenship after detention, rather than verifying it before trying to remove her. Diaz Morales, who was 22 when the case first drew public attention and 23 by early June, said she was separated from her 5-year-old son during the detention.
The legal fight escalated in federal court in December 2025, when U.S. District Judge Brendan Abell Hurson in Maryland blocked her removal while the citizenship claim was reviewed. On June 1, 2026, Diaz Morales received her passport. On May 27, DHS asked the Executive Office for Immigration Review to dismiss the removal case, and by June 16 her attorney Gunther Sanabria said the deportation effort had been dropped.
For Diaz Morales’s lawyers, including Victoria Slatton and Zachary Perez, the case showed how fragile citizenship proof can become once a person is inside the immigration system. For immigrant and Latino families across Prince George’s County, the episode underscored a blunt reality: a paper error, a mismatched name or a disputed record can turn a routine identity check into detention, separation and legal limbo.
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