Venezuelan aide to Gov. Healey sues Trump administration to keep her job

A Venezuelan staffer working for Gov. Maura Healey could lose her job because her H-1B visa is about to expire and the Trump administration has not granted her permanent residency, according to court documents.

Valentina Amaro Bowser, who serves as a full-time media director for Healey and is married to an American citizen, has been in the process of applying to stay in the U.S. In a lawsuit filed in a Boston federal court, she argued the Trump administration is delaying her application for permanent residency because of a pause on processing immigration benefits for citizens of 39 countries, including Venezuela.

“She has lived and worked in this country legally 100% of the time for over a decade. This is completely legal immigration. There's not one flaw that I know of in her history,” said Bowser’s lawyer, Anthony Drago Jr., in a phone interview. “This is a person who's done everything, literally everything, right from day one. The only reason why you're talking to me is because she's Venezuelan. That's it.”

Bowser's employer-sponsored H-1B work visa is set to expire on Feb. 14, because she has reached the maximum six-year allotment. She entered the country in 2013 to attend college in Miami, according to the court filing, and transferred to Emerson College in Boston, where she graduated in 2018. She was first granted an H-1B work visa in October 2019, according to court records.

A spokesperson for Healey said Bowser will be placed on unpaid leave for two weeks, starting Saturday. In the meantime, Drago said, he is asking a court to approve an emergency motion requiring the federal government to provide Bowser a separate employment authorization card.
Drago said Bowser will still have legal status to stay in the country even if her H-1B work visa expires, because of her pending permanent residency application. But federal immigration agents have been unpredictable under the Trump administration.
“We live in, let us say, different times these days," Drago said. "She's here legally.”
In a statement, the governor said Bowser has “done everything right” and dedicated her public service career to “making sure that every community across our state has access to their government services and resources.”

“She loves our country and wants to become a United States citizen — and she deserves to be,” Healey said in the statement. “Instead, the federal government is taking away her livelihood and depriving Massachusetts residents of their connection to state government.”

Bowser earns $94,738 as director of multicultural media, according to state payroll records.

Bowser’s lawsuit also challenges a trio of policies from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that allegedly placed an indefinite pause on pending immigration benefit applications and partially restricted and limited the entry of citizens from multiple countries, including Venezuela.

The policies were put in place as a result of travel restrictions President Trump announced in June and expanded later in the year after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guard troops in Washington. He has pleaded not guilty.

But Drago argues in the lawsuit that Bowser and her husband filed the residency application almost a year before the policies were issued and “well in advance” of Feb. 14, when Bowser’s employer-sponsored H-1B work visa is set to expire.

Drago also contends USCIS does not have the authority to hold applications that are filed by people who are already in the country.

Bowser is “not seeking to enter this country from abroad. Moreover, the Plaintiffs had a reasonable expectation that their applications would be adjudicated in a timely fashion by the USCIS and that Valentina Amaro Bowser’s nationality could not be used against her when considering eligibility for the benefits she applied for,” the lawsuit says.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a June statement announcing the travel restrictions, the Trump administration said Venezuela lacks a “competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.”

“Venezuela has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals,” the statement said.

The lawsuit was first reported by Universal Hub’s Adam Gaffin.

Bowser married her husband in November 2024, and the two filed paperwork in January 2025 to secure Bowser’s residency, according to the court records.

Drago said the couple “had no reason to believe” the residency application would not be processed before Bowser’s work authorization expired.

Bowser and her attorney attended an interview at the USCIS Boston Field Office on Jan. 7 as part of the application process, according to court documents.

“Although there were no issues with the interview, the USCIS officer was not permitted to approve any of the Plaintiffs’ applications due to the unlawful hold the agency has on adjudication of all applications filed by citizens of 39 countries, one of which is Venezuela," her attorney said in the court filing.

Drago said USCIS advertises the processing time for a permanent residency application as seven-and-a-half months. But Bowser waited over 12 months to be interviewed “only to learn that the USCIS could not adjudicate the applications because of an unlawful hold.”

“There's no reason to believe that her case was going to be denied,” Drago said by phone.