Mark Longo says his wife has been locked in federal custody for nearly a month over what he calls a paperwork mix-up.
Daniela Bittner, 30, a German native married to the animal-rescue influencer for four years, was taken by plainclothes officers on Oct. 16 at Elmira airport in upstate New York, Longo told The Post. The couple had been preparing to board a flight to a TikTok event when agents swarmed their car without identifying themselves, he said.
“This is a minor paperwork issue and it’s being treated as if my wife literally crawled out a hole to get into this country,” Longo said.
Bittner has since been shuttled through detention centers in Syracuse, Buffalo, Louisiana and Texas, her husband said. She wears 24-hour contacts and went more than two weeks without a replacement pair, he added, which “almost pulled her retinas off her eyeballs.”
“She came into this country legally on a visa. We filed the paperwork and stuff and apparently the government is saying we filed the wrong piece of paper,” Longo said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson pushed back on that account. Between May 2021 and November 2022, Bittner lawfully entered the United States multiple times with permission to stay temporarily, the spokesperson said.
“She chose to overstay her welcome in defiance of our nation’s laws,” the spokesperson continued.
Longo said he traveled to Germany in 2022 to help Bittner sort out her visa status, and the couple married later that year in Connecticut. Afterward, he said, they submitted all required immigration paperwork and responded to requests for additional information.
“They had asked for additional information, which we provided, and then apparently they sent a letter stating that it was denied because we filed the wrong paperwork, which we never received,” Longo said.
The DHS spokesperson emphasized that a pending application does not grant legal status.
Bittner, who has no criminal record, was hit with the maximum penalty: an administrative deportation, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to remove someone without a hearing, Longo said. She could be deported at any moment, he added, a prospect that threatens to collapse their nonprofit, P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary.
The upstate New York sanctuary houses roughly 600 animals, including 100 horses, that the couple cares for together.
“This will ruin my life. Like P’Nut was enough for me, and now you’re gonna take away the one symbol that I work for every day, and that’s animal rescue,” Longo said. “This has been a nightmare to say the least.”
The couple gained national attention after state officials seized their pet squirrel P’Nut from their Pine City home in late October, then euthanized and decapitated the animal to test for rabies. The killing of the social media-famous squirrel, who had appeared in countless TikTok videos, sparked outrage among followers and animal lovers, fueled further when officials acknowledged the rabies test came back negative.
Longo has described the loss of P’Nut as devastating, and now frames his wife’s detention as a second blow aimed at the same mission.