Following Legal Path to Citizenship, Antioch Woman with No Criminal History Detained by ICE
For Terez Metry, one of the worst days began like many others — with a FaceTime to her best friend, Jasmine Sneed.
It was Monday, Feb. 2, and Metry, in Sneed’s words, “had dolled herself up, lashes, nails, dressed to the tee.” Metry was sitting in the passenger seat in a black shirt and red pants, dressed professionally. Her husband of three years, Dominique “Dom” Flemister, was driving. They’ve known each other since she was in seventh grade, when her family fled Cairo, Egypt, and moved to Franklin, Tenn.
‘Y’all pray for me,’ Metry told Sneed. ‘I’m kind of nervous.’
Flemister and Metry were on their way to the Department of Homeland Security office on Brick Church Pike for an appointment they thought would bring them some security. Flemister is a U.S. citizen, and since the couple married in 2022, they’d hoped to start the naturalization process for Metry. She’d compiled a folder of pictures, bank statements, dates and correspondence. That day, they planned to submit Form I-130, through which U.S. citizens officially sponsor relatives for immigration. It’s the first step toward a Green Card.
“We thought it was going to be an interview where they separated us,” Flemister said, “Try to test us to see if we really live together. They’d ask us questions, and that’s it — we either pass or don’t pass. That’s kind of what we thought we were walking into.
“But it was nothing like that.”
The next time Sneed talked to her best friend, she was in detention.
‘A fairy tale character’
They call themselves the “Angels.”
“We feel like we save the day,” Sneed said. “Like if you put all of us on a schedule in one office, you’re gonna see magic. Put us three together, you really don’t need anybody [else].”
Metry, Sneed and Jennie Picazzo all work together at Tennessee Family Dental. They’re different ages — Metry is 28, Picazzo is 36 and Sneed is 41 — and from different backgrounds — Metry is from Egypt, Sneed is Black and Picazzo’s family is of Asian descent.
They see each other all day at work, and share group dinners monthly. Their go-to is Sushi Train, the all-you-can-eat spot on White Bridge Pike where you pull plates off a conveyor belt.
Sneed said they never talk about work. They talk about their relationships and what they’re wearing next week. Metry recently got a classic pair of black-and-white Jordan Ones, telling Sneed she was working on her ‘minimalist era.’
“Terez,” Sneed recalled saying, “you’re a Capricorn, bro. That’s not gonna fly.”
Two years ago, when Sneed got married, she said Metry asked her to come over to her apartment in Antioch. This sort of invitation was normal — they always get together to melt into the couch and watch “Stranger Things” and “Orange is the New Black.”
When Sneed got to Metry’s place, all her friends were inside. Metry had put together a surprise bridal shower.
“She just wants to show up for her friends,” Sneed told the Banner. “And it’s not just me. This is everyone she comes in contact with.”
Twice a week, Sneed teaches a step class in Inglewood. Each week, Metry is there.
Metry has worked the front desk for Tennessee Family Dental since she finished assisting school. According to coworkers, she’s become the unofficial person in charge of welcoming new hires and celebrating birthdays. On Fridays, she brings enchiladas. For birthdays, she’ll cook whatever people want. Sometimes, she makes Egyptian food — kofta, rice and potatoes — but her coworkers said her best dish is pho, with chili paste so spicy it’ll set your mouth on fire.
“Whatever you ask her to cook,” Sneed said, “it’s gonna be bomb.”
Coworkers described Metry as bright, bubbly. They said the aura in a room shifts when she walks through the door.
“She is the person that will find any and every reason to celebrate someone,” Sneed said. “It’s ‘Oh, you tied your shoe. Let’s throw a party!’.”
When she was a teenager, before she finished assisting school, Metry worked at the McDonald’s on Highway 96 in Franklin. Flemister worked there, too, and their coworkers remain some of her best friends.
Terez Metry, Jasmine Sneed, and Jennie Picazzo. Credit: Jasmine Sneed / Submitted photo
Metry’s family immigrated when she was 13, fleeing chaos in Cairo amid the Arab Spring of 2011. The family arrived on a tourist visa and later applied for asylum, which was denied. A couple years later, her brother moved home, and a few years after that, her mother did, too. Metry lived with an uncle in Franklin.
It’s because of this, her friends said, that she looked for family wherever she could find it.
“She considers everyone around her her family,” said Kimi Iruegas, Metry’s former roommate and coworker at McDonald’s. “I have a sister myself, like a blood sister. But I consider [Metry] my sister. She treats you in a way that makes you [feel like] you matter. Like, she makes sure that you matter.”
Last Christmas Eve, Manal Shafik, another coworker, posted on Facebook for the anniversary of her mother’s death. Two days later, the next time Metry saw Shafik, she had a box in hand.
Shafik opened the box and found a coffee mug printed with a picture of her mother. Immediately, she burst into tears, and Metry hugged her.
When Sneed’s mom died four years ago, Metry was also there. Sneed remembers her offering just to be together — ‘time off, money, if you need to cry, I’m here.’
“I’ve met selfless people, people with hearts of gold,” Sneed said. “But this girl, she’s like a fairy tale character. Like something you read in a book.”
That’s part of why Monday landed so heavily for everyone in Metry’s orbit. Sneed was at the office when the boss walked in.
‘Have you talked to Terez?’ he asked. Sneed said she hadn’t, not since that morning.
He told her what had happened. And she said it was like her world shut down.
‘Get your lawyer involved’
Flemister was two grades ahead of Metry at Franklin High School, but his sister was the same age as her, so he said Metry was always at his house. They started to see a lot of each other when they worked together at McDonald’s.
Metry was Flemister’s manager, and he used to joke that he’d only show up for the morning shift if she made him McCafé Donut Sticks. When it was cold, Metry gave Flemister a ride to work, because he only had a motorcycle.
In 2021, Flemister, Metry and Iruegas went to dinner at Plaza Mariachi. In the aftermath, Flemister and Metry started texting, and a relationship formed.
When they got married in 2022, they started the process to officially make Metry a citizen. That’s when they found out Metry had an order of removal from years ago, when she was 13.
“Her mom didn’t even tell her the situation,” Flemister said. “She was pretty much abandoned.”
Monday was Flemister and Metry’s second interview with DHS. They thought getting approved for I-130 would protect Metry from the order. At the first interview, DHS hadn’t asked very detailed questions — they’d asked for bank statements and other documents. On Monday, Flemister and Metry sat in front of a DHS employee’s desk. He mostly typed data into his computer, and they sat in silence.
Flemister said the employee told them the ‘good news’ — that they were approved for the I-130. But then he turned to him.
‘I need to talk to you for a second.’
Okay, Flemister thought, this must be the actual interview.
He followed the DHS employee back out the keypad lock door they’d entered to the waiting room and the door slammed shut behind him.
Immigration was there, the employee told him, and they were about to detain his wife.
Flemister didn’t get to say goodbye. They took Metry out the back of the building. Flemister was allowed to reenter and collect her things. Immigration confiscated her phone. Flemister felt a pang when he saw her wedding ring.
The DHS employee gave Flemister no instructions. ‘I think you should definitely get your lawyer involved,’ was the best he could offer.
‘A messed up case’
From the snippets of conversation he’s been allowed with his wife, Flemister has gleaned that Metry was detained in a Nashville facility, then transported to Knoxville. By Monday, she told him she thinks she’ll be in Louisiana, where the government hopes to execute her order of removal.
She told Flemister that, because of her professional clothes, immigration personnel were confused by her presence.
‘We don’t know what your case is,’ she told him they said to her, ‘but we can tell that it’s messed up.’ She said they told her they’ve been getting a lot of ‘messed up’ cases under the new administration.
After leaving the facility on Brick Church, Flemister called their lawyer, Solomon Gilliam. They’re seeking a temporary stay of removal to keep Metry in the country, and their friends have started a GoFundMe for her legal defense.
Speaking with the Banner, Gilliam said there are legal pathways for someone like Metry to take, and “that’s exactly what she was doing.”
“I would say it was a shock,” he said. “I really have only heard stories randomly, maybe from a colleague or two, but honestly, I’ve not had a client on my watch be detained, even a client who’s similarly situated and already had an order of removal.”
Gilliam pointed out that she came here as a minor against her will. She got married to a U.S. citizen, she’s never been in trouble and she and Flemister have put having kids on hold while her immigration status got sorted out.
In addition to the stay, Gilliam said they will seek to file a motion to reopen Metry’s immigration proceedings. They’re flying blind, Gilliam said, because they don’t know the basis for the original motion for her removal.
Gilliam said that a case decided Thursday by the Board of Immigrant Appeals will make it more difficult to win. The case was very similar to Metry’s, and the Board ruled that being married to a U.S. citizen was not sufficient extenuating circumstances for immigrants with orders of removal. Now, they must try to differentiate Metry and Flemister’s case.
“You mean to tell me that the Department of Homeland Security has no one else to focus on?” Gilliam said. “This is what we’re doing now with people, and I’m pretty sickened over it.”
‘She flies right’
On Wednesday around 1 p.m., Sneed got a text from her best friend for the first time since she was detained. It was Picazzo’s birthday week, and Metry asked Sneed to apologize for her, since she couldn’t make it. She told her friend she loved her, and that she was happy they watched “Orange is the New Black” because it prepared her for what lay ahead. She asked Sneed to check on Flemister and their two dogs.
“I’m so scared,” she wrote. “I’m so cold.”
Sneed was with a patient when she got this text. It was this last part that got her — the image of warm and bubbly Metry cold and afraid brought her to tears.
Later that day, Sneed got a FaceTime from a blocked number. When she picked up, for the first time since Monday, she saw Metry’s face. Her professional attire was gone — instead, she was wearing a red prison jumpsuit.
“I’m gonna put some money on your books,” Sneed told her. “We’re gonna get you another blanket.”
But Metry said no — that if she was caught with the blanket, she would get in trouble.
Sneed overheard her friend welcoming the other detainees, telling them where they could put their things, asking if they needed anything.
Metry suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, with shooting pains through her ankle and knee. Earlier this year, her insurance finally came through with the medication she needed. On Tuesday, because she was in detention, she missed an injection she needed.
On Thursday, friends sat in the living room of Flemister and Metry’s new house in Antioch. Flemister and Metry had put up some hearts for Valentine’s Day, and wispy ghosts of Halloween decorations lingered in the front yard and the living room. They love Halloween — “We’re spooky people,” Flemister said — and each year, they watch all the Michael Myers movies, the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies, and drive around to haunted houses.
Their dogs — an Australian shepherd, Leo, and a shih tzu, Luna — slept at the fringes of the gathering. Every time Flemister gets home and enters through the garage, he said, both dogs get excited.
“They’re like, ‘Is mom coming around the corner?’” Flemister said.
“President Donald J. Trump is removing illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and drug dealers from our streets and sending them back where they belong,” read a Feb. 2025 White House Statement.
Terez Metry is a 28-year-old with no criminal record. What’s hit her people the hardest is that she tried to play by the rules, and she was still detained.
“That is my girl,” Sneed said. “And she flies right.”
When Terez was detained, she was in the middle of planning Picazzo’s baby shower.
“It’s just really upsetting,” Picazzo said. “She was doing what she had to do to make sure everything worked out right, that she would be able to stay here and have a home.
“She was doing everything. And then she still got this outcome.”
