Trapped by the System: How A Lien Exposes the Cruel Catch-22 of Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

In a small, tension-filled room, a young couple—Sophie, an American citizen, and Oscar, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador—face an immigration officer during their I-130 green card interview. What begins as a routine step toward legal residency spirals into a bureaucratic nightmare, ending with Oscar’s detention. This is the crux of A Lien, a 15-minute short film by New Jersey-born brothers Sam and David Cutler Kreutz, filmmakers whose storytelling roots trace back to childhood walks in the woods, crafting tales without a TV to distract them. Now spanning both coasts—Sam in Los Angeles, David on the East Coast—the duo has turned their lens on one of America’s most divisive issues: immigration.

The film’s title, A Lien, is a clever play on words, blending “alien”—a legal term for non-citizens—with “lien,” evoking the idea of a debt or claim. “It speaks to the dichotomy at the heart of the film,” Sam explains in a recent Back in America podcast interview. “Liens are about ownership and paperwork, a very non-human thing, while ‘alien’ ties into people, home, and displacement.” For Oscar, who arrived in the U.S. in 1994 and overstayed his visa, the lien is literal: the government’s authority to reclaim him looms large.

The Cutler Kreutz brothers stumbled upon this story via a New York Times article, a spark that ignited months of dialogue between them. “We kept coming back to it,” David recalls. “It felt like a story that needed to be told.” Their process—collaborative, iterative, and deeply personal—distilled a complex life into a concise narrative, bounded by a car-to-car loop that captures the couple’s journey to and from the interview. To ensure authenticity, they consulted immigration lawyers and invited individuals who had navigated similar processes to join them on set. The result is a film that resonates widely, with viewers often in tears, saying it mirrors their own experiences.

A Universal Struggle in a Specific Frame

A Lien zeroes in on the I-130 petition process, a legal pathway under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) Section 201(b)(2)(A)(i), which allows U.S. citizens to sponsor immediate relatives—like spouses—for permanent residency. The process requires Form I-130, a Petition for Alien Relative, followed by an interview to verify the relationship’s legitimacy. For Sophie and Oscar, this step is meant to secure Oscar’s green card after years in legal limbo. Yet, as the film unfolds, the interview becomes a trap. “You summoned us here,” Sophie protests to the ICE officer detaining her husband. “We came because you asked us to.”

This twist reflects a real, if contested, aspect of U.S. immigration enforcement. Under INA Section 287(a)(2), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers can arrest individuals suspected of being deportable without a warrant if they have “reason to believe” the person is undocumented—a low evidentiary threshold upheld by courts like the Ninth Circuit in Tejeda-Mata v. INS (1984). For those like Oscar, who entered legally but overstayed, INA Section 237(a)(1)(C)(i) deems them removable. The film’s climax—where compliance with the system leads to punishment—echoes a Kafkaesque reality that immigration advocates criticize as fundamentally unjust.

The brothers didn’t invent this scenario from scratch. “We were blown away,” Sam says, recalling their shock at learning ICE could use a mandated interview as a deportation opportunity. “It felt so crazy we had to include it, or people wouldn’t believe it.” Indeed, a 2018 American Immigration Council report documented cases where immigrants attending required USCIS appointments were detained by ICE, a practice legal scholars argue skirts due process protections under the Fifth Amendment.

Immigration by the Numbers

The Cutler Kreutz brothers’ film lands at a pivotal moment. According to Pew Research Center’s February 7, 2025, survey, 59% of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s renewed efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, up from 54% in 2019 during his first term. Yet, the same survey reveals a split: 44% believe the administration is doing “too much” on deportations, while 47% say it’s “about right.” This polarization underscores the issue’s complexity, mirrored in A Lien’s reception across political lines.

As of 2023, the U.S. housed 47.1 million immigrants—roughly one in seven residents—per the Migration Policy Institute. Pew estimates 11 million were unauthorized in 2022, a figure Trump has inflated to 30-34 million in past rhetoric, though no data supports this claim. For those seeking legal status, the green card backlog is daunting: in fiscal 2023, only 1.1 million permanent resident visas were issued, against a queue of millions, per the Department of State. Family-based immigration, like Oscar’s case, accounts for two-thirds of green cards annually, yet single-country caps (7% per nation) delay processing for years—a bottleneck Trump’s first-term proposals aimed to narrow to immediate family only.

Art Meets Politics

Filmed in 2022, A Lien predates Trump’s second inauguration on January 20, 2025, but its release aligns with his administration’s aggressive immigration agenda. On January 23, ICE resumed raids in sanctuary cities, detaining hundreds, according to Wikipedia’s tracking of Trump’s second-term policies. Executive orders issued January 20 aim to overhaul the system, from reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” program to deploying 1,500 troops to the border—moves echoing Trump’s first-term tally of 472 immigration-related actions, per the Migration Policy Institute.

Does this make A Lien a political film? “Art and politics are inseparable,” David argues, citing Guernica and Goya as historical precedents. “Good art responds to the cultural zeitgeist.” Sam adds that they wrote the script before Trump’s current term, yet its resonance has grown as immigration debates intensify. A news clip of Trump’s voice in the film nods to this context, though the brothers insist the focus remains human: “It’s about families,” Sam says, pointing to Nina, the couple’s daughter, as the emotional core.

Beyond the Screen

The filmmakers hope A Lien sparks dialogue. “It’s incumbent on us as citizens to tell our leaders how we want the country to be,” David asserts, noting that half of Americans don’t vote—a 2024 Pew finding pegging turnout at 48%. Advocacy, they suggest, starts with empathy: putting viewers in Sophie and Oscar’s shoes. Negative backlash? Minimal so far. “People resonate with it, no matter their politics,” Sam says, a sentiment echoed by festival-goers from 2023-2024.

For the Cutler Kreutz brothers, filmmaking is a sibling synergy—Sam’s formal cinema training complements David’s intuitive approach. Their past work, like Flounder (toxic masculinity) and Trapped (a janitor’s perilous night), shares no overt thread, but all aim to captivate and provoke feeling. In A Lien, they’ve crafted a microcosm of America’s immigration maze—one that, in 2025, feels more urgent than ever. As David puts it, “We’re all a little uncertain right now,” a sentiment linking Oscar’s fate to a nation on edge.

What is America to them? For Sam, it’s home—a comforting return through TSA. For David, it’s dialogue—a space where differing views collide and coexist. Through A Lien, they invite us to join that conversation.