Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities shuttled a Maryland woman among multiple detention facilities over three-plus weeks as she tried to prove she is a U.S. citizen.

Addressing reporters for the first time Friday since her release Jan. 7 from an ICE detention center, Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, 22, described spartan conditions inside the detention spaces, including scant food and, in one, having to sleep on the floor.

“They told me I only had two options: Buy a ticket, or they were going to deport me,” she said, describing her time at ICE’s Baltimore field office in Hopkins Plaza before being transferred to Louisiana.

“I told them I was born here.”

Federal agents arrested her during a December traffic stop in Baltimore and have claimed she is a Mexican national named Dulce Consuelo Madrigal Diaz who is in the U.S. unlawfully. Her legal team says she remains in deportation proceedings despite providing ICE multiple documents that prove her identity and U.S. citizenship.

The fight over the basic facts of her identity has made her case one of the most jarring among thousands of immigration arrests in Maryland since President Donald Trump supercharged enforcement efforts last year.

On Dec. 14, Diaz Morales, who says she was born in Laurel, was a passenger in the car her sister was driving when multiple vehicles surrounded them. The agents provided no reason they were taking her, according to Diaz Morales’ sister, Sirley.

“I was in shock,” Diaz Morales said Friday.

She said her fear eased a bit when she realized the agents were allowing her sister to leave.

“Her detention was not the result of criminal conduct,” said Victoria Slatton, an attorney at Sanabria & Associates, the firm representing Diaz Morales. “It was a bureaucratic failure of the institution, a failure of the United States itself.”

Her detention stems from an encounter at the U.S. border in Arizona in 2023 during which ICE said she told Customs and Border Protection agents she was a citizen of Mexico. Her family previously said she was living in Mexico at the time but left for the United States after an emergency and wasn’t carrying all of her documentation amidst the hurry.

It’s possible to be a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico. The discrepancy in the surnames she uses and that ICE has used to refer to her is the result of an administrative error related to her parents getting married after she was born, according to the family.

Diaz Morales was placed into removal proceedings after the 2023 encounter and appeared before an immigration judge twice. She didn’t have an attorney at either hearing but reiterated that she was a citizen, she said.

Last year, she was ordered to be deported in absentia, meaning she was not present at the hearing. Diaz Morales said she never received notice of that third hearing.

The order — and being placed into removal proceedings in the first place — was a mistake, Slatton said.

“No matter what, no immigration court has jurisdiction over a U.S. citizen,” she said. “A removal order does not make a U.S.-born citizen any less of a citizen.”

Slatton and the rest of her legal team said they have provided ICE a U.S. birth certificate, hospital and immunization records, and more to prove her citizenship. Now ICE is asking for a passport, and Slatton said they have sought the help of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen in obtaining one.

“Every time we produce a new piece of evidence, they’re seemingly happy to accept it but give us exactly zero information on whether this moves the needle,” said Zachary Perez, another attorney working her case.

“We’re a little exhausted with playing the ‘if you give a mouse a cookie’ game,” he said.

An ICE spokesperson could not be reached immediately Friday afternoon to offer additional comment on the case.

ICE transferred her five times among facilities in Louisiana, Texas and New Jersey over 25 days, according to Slatton and Perez. She spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve in detention separated from her family, including her young son.

“The first couple days, he stopped eating,” said Diaz Morales, whose father cared for his grandchild in her absence. The boy cried and asked for his mother every day, she said.

Diaz Morales has another hearing before an immigration judge in July, Perez said, but they hope to resolve the issue before then. In the meantime, she has been released under “intensive supervision,” requiring her to make frequent check-ins at the Baltimore ICE office.

This week, they placed an ankle monitor on her during the nearly eight-hour visit, she said, then called her for additional questioning.

“These constant check-ins are disrupting her life,” Perez said.

Still, Diaz Morales said, wearing the monitor is better than going back into detention, and she’s grateful to be back with her family.

“It doesn’t matter that we’re Hispanic. We have the same rights, all of us that were born here,” she said.