Jack Kent Cooke Wife Arrested in Deportation Case
The wife of billionaire Jack Kent Cooke was arrested Monday by the Immigration and Naturalization Service after she lost an appeal of her deportation order.
Marlena Ramallo Chalmers Cooke, who pleaded guilty in 1986 to a drug trafficking charge and served time in a federal penitentiary, was taken into custody without incident at her apartment in Alexandria, Va., INS spokesman Duke Austin said.
Last week, she lost her appeal of the deportation order originally issued in 1988, before she married the owner of the Washington Redskins football team.
U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton ordered her released on $50,000 bond pending another hearing, INS spokesman Verne Jervis said.
Jervis said the agency considers Marlena Cooke deportable because she left the country voluntarily while she was under the deportation order, negating her right to remain in the country. He said she would have an opportunity to appeal a decision after the hearing.
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