A woman whose illegal immigrant husband was behind a hunger strike inside ICE’s Delaney Hall detention center has launched a campaign for him to receive a crime victim visa.
Since Martin Soto was detained by ICE in February, his wife Gabriela Soto has pushed for his release. While Martin was helping lead the hunger strike inside the Newark detention facility over allegations of poor conditions, his wife spent days protesting to free every detainee.
He has since been moved to ICE’s detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
All the while, Gabriela claimed that Martin, an illegal immigrant from Peru, was “abducted” by ICE while out buying diapers for their baby. She argued that he was “a loving father, husband, son, church member, worker.”
The sob story helped Gabriela raise more than $67,000. Media outlets and Democratic politicians also largely embraced Martin and Gabriela Soto as sympathetic figures, promoting Gabriela’s account of Martin’s arrest.
But a local police report previously obtained by The Daily Wire told a different story. According to the report, local authorities in Kearny, New Jersey, arrested Martin for allegedly committing a violent domestic assault on the same day his wife claimed ICE arrested him.
The day after his arrest, ICE officers showed up at the jail and took Soto into custody.
Photo of Martin Soto from GoFundMe by Gabriela Soto
The report stated that Martin “purposely” caused “bodily injury” to a female victim, whose name was redacted, “specifically by using his hands, both opened and closed to strike” her “in her face, causing minor scratches and cuts to her face and neck.”
Martin then “placed a hand over” her “mouth so she could not scream for help,” according to the report.
The Daily Wire could not confirm the identity of the assault victim. In an earlier Instagram message to The Daily Wire, Gabriela confirmed that it was her husband mentioned in the report, but denied that he committed the assault, saying the incident never happened.
Now, Gabriela is trying to flip the script by asking supporters to call the New Jersey attorney general and demand that her husband receive a visa for being a victim of a crime, according to a recent Instagram post on her page.
The visa, known as a U-Visa, is reserved for “victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse” and who assist authorities with criminal investigations, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The Instagram post includes a script for supporters to recite during the calls to the state’s top cop.
“I am calling in regards to the pending U-Visa application for Martin Soto. His application has been pending for the past month due to the illegal labor policy of paying detainees $1 a day for work performed,” the script begins.
The script also stated that Martin is a father of two, but “would be a father of three” if not for his wife’s “miscarriage due to the stress of her husband’s time in detention.”
“He has suffered cold nights, endured inedible and expired food, and languished in solitary confinement. I’m requesting for the attorney general to sign Martin Soto’s U-Visa immediately so his federal judge sees a change in status and grants his release to come home to his family where he belongs,” it continues.
Scott Mechkowski, visiting fellow for deportation studies at the Oversight Project, said Martin is the least deserving of such protections.
“The U-Visa exists so victims will cooperate with prosecutors,” the former ICE deputy field office director said. “There is no prosecution here. No one has been charged, no one has been arrested, and a civil rights inquiry is not a criminal case.”
“They are asking a state officer to certify a crime no prosecutor has alleged, in order to manufacture federal immigration relief the state has no authority to grant. That is not victim protection, that is using a victim protection statute to route around federal law, and the people who pay for it are the trafficking and domestic violence survivors who have been waiting years in that line who the visas are actually intended for,” Mechkowski said.
Martin crossed the Arizona border illegally in January 2024 and was set to be deported before he expressed a fear of returning to his home country and was ultimately allowed to stay in the United States.
Now, he awaits the fate of his deportation case.
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