Love, Paperwork, and ICE

My fiancé and ICE and me

Photo by Gautam Krishnan on Unsplash

I first met my now fiancé when we were 19. Studying abroad in Finland, we met somewhere in the Arctic and the rest was history.

Welllllll, not quite.

Long story long, our relationship has been full of paperwork. Love, too, of course, but a shit ton of paperwork. At first it was fun—I’d fly out to France for a week or two, he’d fly to the States. It was very Before Sunrise, very exciting and foreign and fun. But then COVID hit, the world went to shit, and everything became complicated.

Ok fine, I’m being dramatic. We were actually really lucky, all things considered. I moved to France some time during the pandemic, applying for a long-stay tourist visa and building a life there by accident. As a very privileged, very white, very American immigrant, I didn’t have much to complain about in France. The French administration always took forever to process my paperwork, sure, but I was never detained. Never questioned or terrified at the border. Never once felt unsafe speaking my mother tongue. That was way more than most of my friends could say, and far from the reality of the majority of immigrants living in France. My experience was the soft-focus version; theirs was the gritty realism.

Still, I loved living in France. I wrapped myself in the language & the culture, felt (mostly) welcomed, and only a little ashamed of my origins (lol). We spent six years together in France, living and loving and having it so damn good we had no idea what lay ahead. No idea of the chaos coming straight toward us with a clipboard and government seal.

Then we decided: okay. It’s time. Let’s move to the U.S.

Cue the sparkly NYC montage. Cue me in heels, coffee in hand, shouting at a taxi in the rain. We were ready. He applied to a job last November and made it all the way to final candidate status. Then—because the U.S. is currently going through A Political Era™ and immigration is the national punching bag—they went with an American instead.

We were wrecked. Devastated. So insanely stressed. Then we did what immigrants have always done: rerouted.

Enter: the K-1 fiancé visa

Yes. The 90 Day Fiancé one. Same one. Same chaos. Same countdown clock energy.

The deal is simple (and insane): you apply, you wait forever, the government stalks your relationship harder than your ex on Instagram, and once your partner finally arrives, you have ninety days to get married.

Ninety days to plan a wedding.
Ninety days to find housing.
Ninety days to become a legal family.
Ninety days to not scream and cry and question your entire life plan.

I’m writing about this now because we’re about to move. Because my life currently feels like a rom-com where the third lead is ICE. Because behind every sweet cross-border love story is a pile of forms, legal fees, anxiety, and power structures deciding who gets belonging and who doesn’t.

And because in this political moment—where immigration gets turned into a talking point, a headline, a fear tactic—I want to talk about the real thing:

Two twenty-somethings in love, filling out government forms at 2 a.m., trying to build a life together.

It’s loving, furious, hopeful, exhausting, paperwork-covered love. And most certainly not for the faint of heart.