A Latvian national who once appeared on his country's version of Dancing With The Stars was arrested by ICE in San Francisco after overstaying his visa for more than a decade, and federal officials say his record includes a gun assault conviction and a sexual battery arrest.
Roberts Nemiro, a professional ballroom dancer who had been living in the Bay Area, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on July 28 at the conclusion of a scheduled U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services interview. He and his partner, identified only as Lydia, had shown up with their immigration attorney for what they expected to be a routine step in his marriage-based green card application. Instead, ICE officers were waiting. USCIS had referred Nemiro's case to the agency, and officers took him into custody on the spot.
The next day, ICE transferred Nemiro to a detention facility in Bakersfield, California. He now faces removal proceedings.
Nemiro entered the United States in October 2011 on a visa. That visa expired in August 2012. He never left. For roughly fourteen years, he remained in the country illegally, working as a dance instructor in the Bay Area, listing himself on LinkedIn as a Professional Ballroom Dance Teacher, and at some point marrying or partnering with Lydia and applying for a green card through adjustment of status.
The Department of Homeland Security did not frame this as a paperwork mix-up. In a press release issued July 31, DHS laid out a criminal history that went well beyond an expired visa. According to the agency, Nemiro was previously convicted of aggravated assault of a non-family member with a gun. He also had past arrests for battery, sexual battery, and drug-related offenses.
DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis put it bluntly in the press release:
"This illegal alien from Latvia may have once had a career as a professional dancer on TV, but has turned into a career criminal with a rap sheet that includes aggravated assault with a gun, sexual battery, and drug possession."
Bis added that Nemiro would "soon be deported from our country" and that "ICE is bringing the curtain down on his illegal stay and crime spree here in the U.S."
The DHS statement also took aim at California's sanctuary policies, with Bis noting that "despite California being a sanctuary state, ICE was able to arrest this criminal and get him off our streets." That line underscores a persistent friction between federal immigration enforcement and state-level resistance, a friction that, in cases like this one, leaves illegal immigrants with violent criminal records living freely in American communities for years.
Lydia offered a sharply different account. On a GoFundMe page she created on July 30, titled "Support Robert & Lydia's Immigration Legal Fight," she described the arrest as a blindside during what she believed was a lawful process.
"On July 28, Robert and I attended our scheduled USCIS interview for his marriage-based green card application with our immigration attorney. At the conclusion of the interview, ICE officers detained Robert based on a visa overstay."
She wrote that the couple had "worked hard to do everything we could the right way" and said they "never imagined that attending a required immigration interview would end with our family being separated." The GoFundMe set a $40,000 goal for legal expenses and, as the Daily Mail reported, had nearly reached that target by the time of publication.
Lydia's framing, a family caught off guard while cooperating with the system, omits the criminal history that DHS says prompted the referral. A conviction for aggravated assault with a gun is not a technicality. Neither are arrests for sexual battery and drug offenses. Whatever sympathy the green card interview story might generate, it does not erase the record that federal officials say made Nemiro a priority for removal.
High-profile arrests have become a recurring feature of the current enforcement landscape. In one recent case, a former Olympic canoeist faced criminal charges after an incident at a national landmark, a reminder that past athletic or celebrity status does not place anyone above the law.
Nemiro appeared on Dejo ar Zvaigzni!, the Latvian version of Dancing With The Stars. The original headline and much of the coverage lean on that connection. But the television credit is window dressing. The core facts are straightforward: an illegal immigrant with a conviction for armed assault and additional arrests for violent and drug-related offenses lived in the United States for more than a decade after his legal right to be here expired.
Several details remain unclear. DHS did not specify when Nemiro's criminal conviction and arrests occurred, or in which jurisdiction. The precise legal relationship between Nemiro and Lydia, she is described in different places as both his "partner" and his "wife", is not consistently stated in available reporting. And the current status of any legal challenge his immigration attorneys may mount against the removal proceedings is unknown.
Law enforcement operations that end in dramatic arrests often draw public attention, whether they involve a convicted felon tracked down after a lengthy manhunt or a reality TV dancer detained at an immigration office. The common thread is accountability catching up.
What is clear is that USCIS flagged Nemiro and referred him to ICE, meaning the federal immigration system, at least in this instance, functioned as intended. The agency identified an illegal immigrant with a violent criminal history, coordinated with enforcement, and acted. That this happened in a sanctuary state makes the arrest more notable, not less.
California's sanctuary policies are designed to limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. They do not, and cannot, prevent ICE from making its own arrests on federal authority. But they do make those arrests harder, and they send a political signal that illegal immigrants, even those with criminal records, should not fear removal. Cases like Nemiro's expose the cost of that signal.
Security concerns at prominent locations have also drawn enforcement attention in recent months, including a man arrested after allegedly confronting Secret Service agents at a checkpoint, another case where authorities acted swiftly once a threat was identified.
Nemiro's partner asked supporters on GoFundMe to contribute to his legal fight or, failing that, to share their story. Donors responded quickly, pushing the campaign close to its $40,000 target within days. Whether that money will change the outcome of his removal proceedings remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, vandalism and criminal activity at public sites have kept law enforcement busy across the country, reinforcing the broader point that enforcement works when agencies are allowed to do their jobs.
When an illegal immigrant with a gun assault conviction can live freely in a major American city for fourteen years, the system has not failed because ICE finally showed up. It failed because it took so long.
