Trump Crackdown Holds Military Spouses 08/05 06:25

   

   (AP) -- President Donald Trump's administration has detained dozens of 
parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. troops as it rolls back immigration 
protections for military families to pursue its mass deportation agenda, an 
Associated Press investigation found.

   More than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been 
detained since Trump took office for a second term, and at least six have been 
deported, the AP found in the first accounting of such detentions, which the 
government does not track. At least eight immediate family members of U.S. 
service members remain in federal immigration custody.

   Parents and spouses of people in the military have generally been shielded 
from deportation under bipartisan consensus for decades. But the AP found 
they're now routinely being detained for months as they try to adjust their 
legal status through the policies available to service members' close relatives 
and even as the military continues to recruit by advertising immigration 
benefits for enlistees' families. Experts warn that the reversal could 
undermine military preparedness even as the U.S. is at war in Iran. It's left 
military members without emotional support and caretakers for their children, 
delayed deployments and forced some to take leave.

   "How can I even focus on my military career because I have to worry about 
how my wife is doing?" said Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, who was 
stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas, when his wife was detained outside a Walmart in 
front of their 6-year-old daughter in July.

   A handful of detentions of service members' spouses have prompted public 
backlash and led to intervention by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne 
Mullin to secure their release.

   The Department of Homeland Security has said it does not compile data on 
these cases. The AP obtained information by analyzing thousands of federal 
court records compiled by Habeas Dockets, a project run by the Immigration 
Justice Transparency Initiative; by reviewing existing media coverage; and by 
verifying information with family members and attorneys. The actual number is 
likely much higher than the 51 cases AP found.

   The AP asked for comment from DHS on each case, including the individuals' 
immigration and criminal history. The agency did not provide specific 
information about the majority of cases but noted that at least seven people 
had been removed from the U.S. before, at least eight had removal orders and at 
least two had drunken driving or drug-related convictions.

   "DHS and ICE value the contributions of all those who have served in the 
U.S. military," DHS said in a statement. "U.S. military service alone does not 
automatically grant lawful immigration status, or exempt aliens from the 
consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws."

   The Pentagon declined to comment on the AP's findings.

   Service members are losing their safety net

   Air Force Tech. Sgt. Wendy Gbeve, 30, said she hasn't had a good night's 
sleep since her father, Luis Alberto Ramirez Zavala, was detained by 
immigration officials last month. Gbeve was there when he was arrested at a 
routine interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Missouri 
about his pending application for legal status.

   She spent hours refreshing the USCIS page to track where the government was 
taking her father: from a county jail in Missouri to an Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement detention facility in Texas. Finally, roughly two weeks after he 
was detained, she found out he had been deported to his native Mexico.

   "It's the most frustrating, helpless feeling," Gbeve said.

   Gbeve said ICE still hasn't informed her family why her father was removed 
so quickly. Ramirez Zavala spent most of his life in the U.S. working as a 
ranch hand in rural Illinois.

   Ramirez Zavala's wife of 30 years, a legal permanent resident, is 
considering returning to Mexico to be with her husband. For Gbeve, whose 
husband is also in the Air Force, that would leave no one to watch their 
children, ages 2 and 4, if both were deployed.

   "That would be our entire safety net," she said.

   Military members have had to take leave or delay a deployment

   Some service members have been left caring for children alone.

   Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo, an aviation operations specialist who has 
served for more than a decade, said he would normally be involved in training 
soldiers at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Instead, he is on administrative leave, 
caring for his 5-year-old stepson, Noah, after his Brazilian wife, Maisa Lopes 
Eliaser, was detained in early July.

   It happened during what the family thought was a routine appointment at a 
USCIS office in Alabama. Eliaser arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2019, 
and the couple was trying to change her status.

   Immigration officials asked Jaramillo and his stepson to leave the room. 
Minutes later, they were told that Eliaser had been detained. The next time 
they saw her was inside a detention facility.

   "It is really overwhelming because I need to take care of my kid by myself. 
No one is here to help me out," Jaramillo said.

   At least one active-duty soldier halted her imminent deployment after her 
husband was detained by immigration officers, leaving no one to care for their 
then-5-year-old son, court records show. A judge eventually ordered the husband 
released.

   Trump's policy is a reversal even from his first administration

   A new policy, implemented in April 2025, states that "military service alone 
does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration 
laws."

   Experts in military immigration law said this marks a stark shift from 
previous administrations across the political spectrum, including Trump's first 
administration.

   Dan Gividen, who served as ICE's deputy chief counsel from 2016 to 2019 
under Trump, represents a soldier's father who has been in ICE custody for more 
than eight months. He said that during his time as an ICE prosecutor, 
immigration authorities rarely detained service members' immediate family 
members unless they had committed violent crimes.

   "We would not place them into removal proceedings, period. That's insane," 
Gividen said. "The fact that they're doing it now is just outrageous."

   ICE previously generally canceled past removal orders and allowed parents or 
spouses of troops to adjust their legal status, said Margaret Stock, an 
immigration attorney and retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. She 
said that's because the government wanted to ensure troops focused on their 
duties.

   "It's the same thing that happens if you don't provide healthcare to the 
troops, or you don't provide housing to the troops," she said. If soldiers are 
preoccupied with detained or deported family, "they're not concentrating on 
their job anymore."

   Even some congressional Republicans who are otherwise largely supportive of 
Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown have pushed for the release of service 
members' relatives.

   "The immigration system is failing the honorable and good Americans," 
Florida Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar said at a news conference in July 
advocating for the release of the wife of retired Staff Sgt. Wilmer Trujillo, 
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. DHS said she illegally reentered the U.S. 
after being deported in 2005.

   Although DHS said it does not have data on active-duty troops, it has 
released figures for former service members, who also qualify for immigration 
benefits along with their immediate families. From Jan. 20, 2025, through Jan. 
26, 2026, immigration authorities detained 125 military veterans -- placing 34 
into removal proceedings -- and arrested more than 150 immediate family 
members, DHS said in a letter to several Democratic senators.

   Anh Dung Cong Tran, known as "Tony," had both a father and son who served in 
the military. Tran came to the U.S. in 1990 through a program for children of 
American military personnel born in Vietnam. Tran, 56, was deported in July, 
having lived in the U.S. for decades with regular check-ins with immigration 
authorities after an assault conviction soon after his arrival.

   His son Antonio Tran said his father persuaded him to enlist in the military 
in 2022. "He has a totally different view on America now," said Tran, who was 
discharged as an Army specialist in March after a serious injury.

   Benefits for service members include what's known as parole-in-place

   Military recruiters tout immigration benefits for troops' families as a 
selling point to enlist.

   One of the military's most highly advertised immigration benefits is 
"military parole-in-place," which allows the spouses, children and parents of 
active-duty service members and veterans to obtain legal immigration status 
from within the country. Not everyone qualifies: Those who overstayed visas or 
who already applied for legal status at the border, for example.

   The policy was implemented under Republican President George W. Bush during 
the U.S. war with Iraq in 2007 and codified under Democratic President Barack 
Obama. DHS agencies can grant it on a case-by-case basis.

   Under Trump, the average time it takes to receive military parole-in-place 
has more than doubled to 12 months, according to USCIS data. That leaves 
military families more vulnerable to being placed in ICE custody.

   Recruiters are still promoting immigration benefits

   The AP found that troops' immediate family members have repeatedly been 
detained by ICE while applying for parole-in-place or seeking to adjust their 
status, including during immigration appointments.

   Marine Cpl. Jose Manuel Vilchis-Valle's mother, Ursula Borja Valle, was 
detained at an appointment in August 2025 and deported to Mexico within a week. 
She had lived in the U.S. since the 1990s without a known criminal record. Her 
son was attempting to help her clear up a decades-old removal order through the 
immigration benefits that military recruiters had used to help convince him to 
enlist.

   "They basically told me that if you serve, and if you served honorably, you 
can help your parents," said Vilchis-Valle, 23, who was honorably discharged 
shortly after his mother was deported. "In a perfect world, I wished, because 
of my service, they could have pardoned her."

   In other cases, ICE has detained people who had already been granted 
protection, with the agency later arguing in court filings that their parole 
status had been revoked.

   In June 2025, the Marine Corps officially stopped advertising enlistment as 
a way to protect immigrant family members, in response to inquiries from the 
AP. But recruiters for the Army and the National Guard still promote it.

   "For some service members, enlisting isn't just about serving their 
country," read an Instagram post published in late July by an official Army 
recruiter based in California. "It's also about doing everything they can to 
help protect their parents who sacrificed everything for them."

   Recruiters are expected to highlight the benefits of service to attract 
applicants and military parole-in-place remains in effect, Army spokesperson 
Christopher Surridge said.

   The National Guard said it does not track detentions of its troops' 
relatives or which recruiters advertise immigration benefits and referred 
additional comment to DHS.

   A soldier who helped patrol the border grapples with his father's detention

   For U.S. Army Specialist Romero Ralios, his father's detention has left him 
remorseful about his deployment last year to the Joint Task Force Southern 
Border, where he spent nine months supporting U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

   His father, Sebastian Ralios Tino, a Guatemalan landscaper with no known 
criminal record, was detained this summer. He lived in the U.S. for nearly two 
decades without legal status.

   Ralios' commanding officer, Capt. Mohamed Elmaola, told the AP he wanted to 
speak up because Ralios is a "phenomenal soldier" whose father should receive 
due process.

   "It's very hard to communicate and to have credibility as a leader when your 
own subordinates are unable to get support," Elmaola said. "Considering he 
enlisted his time and his life into supporting and defending the United States 
Constitution, it is the right thing to do to support soldiers and their 
families."

   Romero Ralios now struggles to sleep at night due to the stress and wishes 
he had not been involved in immigration enforcement, even though he was just 
following orders.

   "It was karma. I should've known," Ralios told the AP. "All those families I 
broke. I have regrets."