GREAT FALLS — In 2015, Dakota Wheeler and his mother were booked on a flight from Salt Lake City to London Heathrow, a couple of hours’ drive from their home in Birmingham, England. They were supposed to return after staying two months in Great Falls.

Wheeler, who was 15 at the time, never got on that flight. Neither did his mother, Lisa Anderson, who said she was told that if she left the country, it could scuttle her ability to return and get resident status later on. Instead, she said, she stayed in the country and married an American man she’d known online for a few years.

“They said you’re getting married,” Anderson told Montana Free Press Wednesday. “And I said, ‘Huh? I’m flying out tomorrow.’”

Court documents say that while the new husband originally applied for green cards on be

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