In the heat of the 2024 presidential election, Donald J. Trump’s allies seized on the fate of Peanut the Squirrel, a Norwalk-raised social media star that New York state conservation officials had seized and euthanized.

“The same government that doesn’t care about hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals coming into our country doesn’t want us to have pets. It’s the craziest, the craziest thing,” then-vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance said at a rally just before the election.

Tech entrepreneur and Trump supporter Elon Musk tweeted a meme that read, in part, “if they will raid a house for a squirrel, they’re sure as s— going to come after you.”

Now, federal immigration officers have put one of the late squirrel’s owners in immigration detention pending possible deportation to Germany, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Daniela Bittner was arrested in mid-October after she “chose to overstay her welcome in defiance of our nation’s laws,” according to the federal Department of Homeland Security. Since then, Bittner has been moved through multiple immigration lockups and now is housed in Texas, according to her husband, Mark Longo, who blamed her detention on an immigration paperwork mix-up.

“They put Peanut on a pedestal, won their election and threw him off that pedestal immediately,” Longo told the AP.

The arrest was the latest twist in the tale of Peanut, also known as P’nut, a once-orphaned squirrel whose fun antics made him an online sensation.

Longo brought Peanut to his home in Norwalk and raised him there for several years after seeing the squirrel’s mother run over and killed. Peanut won hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram. In 2023, Longo and Bittner opened a nonprofit animal sanctuary, P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary in New York, taking in other animals including horses, goats and alpacas.

In 2024, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation and Chemung County Department of Health officials seized Peanut and a raccoon for “sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies.” Officials also said that Peanut bit a person involved with the investigation, and both animals were euthanized to test for rabies.

“Well internet, you WON,” Longo posted on Peanut’s Instagram page at the time. “You took one of the most amazing animals away from me because of your selfishness. To the group of people who called (the Department of Environmental Conservation), there’s a special place in hell for you.”

Peanut’s death caused such outrage that DEC employees were told they could work from home for two days as police investigated bomb threats at eight agency facilities statewide. News stories about Peanut’s death also caught the attention of Republicans on the campaign trail, who criticized the state’s response and New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul.

Longo told the AP Wednesday that he tries to steer clear of politics, but couldn’t help but feel like the government keeps wading into his life.

“I’m begging the world to find an answer as to why this keeps happening to me,” he said. “One time, you can call it what it is. Two times, it’s now becoming a little bit more of a target.”

Longo said he and Bittner made a mistake on one of her immigration forms and didn’t catch the error while they were dealing with the dustup over Peanut’s seizure and killing.

“You know, arrest the people who deserve to be arrested. My wife is not one of them,” he said. “You’re telling me, all of this because my wife and I forgot to do the proper form?”

Longo said local officials have been looking into his wife’s case and that he has spoken about her arrest to Connecticut native and UFC chief Dana White, a longstanding ally of President Donald Trump whom Longo said he met after Peanut was taken.

Longo said he will have to shut down the animal sanctuary he and his wife run if she were to be deported.