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This text first appeared on The Struggle Horse, an award-winning nonprofit information group educating the general public on navy service. Subscribe to their e-newsletter.
Military Sgt. Ayssac Correa had simply began his day on the 103rd Quartermaster Firm exterior of Houston on the morning of March 13 when he received a telephone name from his sister-in-law.
She labored on the similar firm as Correa’s spouse and had simply pulled into the parking zone to see three ICE brokers handcuffing her.
“They’re taking Shirly away!” she instructed him.
This month, as protesters conflict with regulation enforcement amid immigration raids in Los Angeles, President Donald Trump has ordered 4,000 Nationwide Guardsmen and 700 active-duty Marines to reply. The transfer injected the navy into the extremely contentious debate over immigration. For the tens of 1000’s of service members whose spouses or mother and father are undocumented, the difficulty was already private, pitting service towards citizenship.
Credit score:
Photograph by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
In his first week in workplace, President Trump signed a number of government orders aimed toward reshaping the nation’s immigration coverage, calling border crossings lately an “invasion” and arguing that many undocumented migrants have dedicated “vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans.”
However Correa and his spouse weren’t too frightened. After they received married in 2022, the couple had filed paperwork to start out Shirly Guardado on the trail to citizenship, and Correa assumed that, as an active-duty soldier, his household wouldn’t be impacted.
“Me being in the military — I felt bad that it was happening, because I’m also married to somebody who’s going through the [immigration] process. But I was like, ‘Oh, there’s no way this is going to happen to us,’” he stated.
That false impression is widespread, immigration attorneys and advocates instructed The Struggle Horse. However in actuality, there is no such thing as a assured path to citizenship for undocumented navy relations — and no assured protections towards deportation.
There aren’t any dependable statistics on what number of service members marry residents of different nations, however it’s not unusual, says Margaret Inventory, a number one knowledgeable on immigration regulation and the navy. The progressive group Fwd.us has estimated that as much as 80,000 undocumented spouses or mother and father of navy members live within the U.S.
“You can imagine what happens when you’re deployed in more than 120 countries around the world,” Inventory stated.
Service members are sometimes hesitant to talk out about their relations’ immigration standing.
“It’s taboo,” says Marino Branes, an immigration lawyer and former Marine who first got here to the U.S. from Peru with out documentation. “It’s not like you’re announcing it to the world.”
However he and different immigration attorneys instructed The Struggle Horse they’re working with active-duty purchasers who’re scrambling to get their spouses or mother and father paperwork as immigration enforcement actions ramp up, and it turns into clear that navy households should not immune.
In April, ICE arrested the Argentinian spouse of an active-duty Coast Guardsman after her immigration standing was flagged throughout a routine safety screening because the couple moved into Navy base housing in South Florida. Final month, the Australian spouse of an Military lieutenant was detained by border officers at an airport in Hawaii throughout a visit to go to her husband. She was despatched again to Australia.
As the controversy over unlawful immigration roils the nation, latest polling from the Pew Analysis Heart exhibits that a few third of Individuals assume that each one undocumented immigrants dwelling within the nation ought to be deported. Fifty-one p.c imagine that some undocumented immigrants ought to be deported, relying on their scenario. As an illustration, almost all these respondents agree that undocumented immigrants who’ve dedicated violent crimes ought to be deported. However simply 5% assume that spouses of Americans ought to be.
Lawmakers have reintroduced a number of payments in Congress that will make it simpler for spouses and fogeys of troops and veterans to get their inexperienced card.
“The anxiety of separation during deployment, the uncertainty of potentially serving in a conflict zone — these challenges weren’t just mine. They were my family’s as well,” Rep. Salud Carbajal, a Democrat from California, stated at a information convention final month. He got here to the U.S. from Mexico as a toddler and served within the Marine Corps.
“I find it unconscionable that someone could step up to serve, voluntarily, in our military and be willing to sacrifice their life for our country only to have their families torn apart.”
“I didn’t hear from her for three days”
The morning that ICE took Shirly Guardado into custody had began like every other. She and Correa had woken early to arrange their 10-month-old son for the day after which taken him to Guardado’s mom to observe him whereas they labored — Correa as a logistics specialist, dealing with the coaching for part-time Military reservists at his unit, and Guardado as a secretary at an air-con manufacturing firm.
Guardado had gotten a piece allow and an order of supervision from ICE, which means she wanted to verify in frequently with immigration officers, after she was apprehended crossing the border about 10 years earlier, her lawyer, Martin Reza, instructed The Struggle Horse. Her final check-in had been in February, only a month earlier than.
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Photograph courtesy of Ayssac Correa
“She reported as normal,” Reza stated. “Nothing happened.”
However on that morning in March, Guardado received an odd telephone name at work. Some form of public security officer had dialed her workplace and wished her to come back exterior to speak. Within the parking zone, three males in plain garments recognized themselves as Division of Public Security officers, Correa instructed The Struggle Horse. As Shirly approached, they stated her automobile had been concerned in an accident. However when she received shut, they grabbed her and handcuffed her, telling her they have been ICE brokers.
That’s when Guardado’s sister-in-law known as Correa.
He stated the ICE brokers refused to inform him the place they have been taking his spouse. By the point he received to her workplace, they have been gone.
“I didn’t hear from her for like three days,” he stated. When she was lastly in a position to name him, from an ICE facility in Conroe, he instructed her there should have been some mistake.
“They’re gonna realize you got your stuff in order, and they’re gonna let you go,” he instructed her.
“I kept thinking, ‘Oh, she’s gonna get out tomorrow. She’s gonna get out tomorrow.’ And then that turned into almost three months,” he stated.
On Could 30, ICE deported her to Honduras. It was her twenty eighth birthday.
Safety by way of navy parole in place
Correa had met Guardado in a espresso store in Houston in 2020 — “the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he stated. After they received married, Reza helped the couple file paperwork for Correa to sponsor Guardado to get her inexperienced card.
As a result of Correa was within the navy, the couple additionally put in an utility for navy parole in place, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers program that may assist navy and veteran relations quickly keep within the U.S. legally whereas they work to get a extra everlasting standing.
This system grew out of the experiences of Yaderlin Hiraldo Jimenez, an undocumented Military spouse whose husband, Employees Sgt. Alex Jimenez, went lacking in Iraq in 2007 after his unit got here beneath rebel hearth.
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U.S authorities photograph by Spc. Josh Lecappelain
Alex Jimenez had petitioned for a inexperienced card for his spouse earlier than he deployed, however whereas the Military looked for him, the Division of Homeland Safety labored to deport her. After the case gained nationwide consideration, the division modified course and allowed her to remain within the U.S. quickly. She was awarded a inexperienced card in July of 2007. Virtually a yr later, the Military discovered her husband’s stays.
“After that case, the bureaucracy realized that they could go ahead and do this for everybody,” Inventory stated. “It would solve a lot of problems for military families, and it would contribute to readiness, and the troops are going to be a lot happier, because there’s a lot of troops that have this problem.”
However not everyone seems to be granted parole, and submitting will be sophisticated. Traditionally, all the navy branches have provided authorized help to navy relations making use of, so long as authorized assets have been out there. However the Coast Guard lately “discontinued” its authorized help to undocumented Coast Guard relations seeking to apply for a navy parole in place, a spokesperson stated in an electronic mail to The Struggle Horse.
In response to follow-up questions, the Coast Guard known as it a “pause” that resulted from a “recent review of assistance with immigration services available to dependents.” The Struggle Horse has confirmed a number of examples of Coast Guard households being denied this authorized help, though USCIS says this system remains to be lively and navy households are nonetheless eligible to use. The opposite navy branches say they haven’t made any modifications to the authorized immigration help they supply navy households beneath the brand new administration.
However even for households who’re in a position to apply for parole in place, approval isn’t assured. There are particular disqualifying components, like having a legal report, and USCIS workplaces have discretion over granting parole.
“All of these field offices have a captain, a chief there,” says Branes. “They dictate policy there.”
USCIS denied Guardado and Correa’s utility for navy parole in place. Regardless that ICE had launched her to work within the U.S. with check-ins a decade earlier, and she or he had no legal report, she was technically beneath an expedited deportation order, which USCIS instructed her was disqualifying. They instructed her to file her utility for navy parole in place with ICE as a substitute.
That’s not unusual, Inventory stated. “But ICE doesn’t have a program to give parole in place.”
When ICE brokers arrested Guardado, Reza stated, her request for a navy parole in place had been sitting with the company for over a yr with no response.
“Families serve too”
Correa is planning to fly right down to Honduras shortly to carry their son, Kylian, to reunite together with his mom. He’s put in a request to switch to Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras in hopes of being stationed nearer to them. He stated his spouse has been bouncing from lodge to lodge since touchdown within the nation. Her brother, who’s a authorized resident, flew to Honduras to satisfy her there, since she has no household within the nation, having come to the U.S. greater than a decade earlier.
He desires to proceed serving within the Military, which he joined in 2018. Shortly afterward, he deployed to Syria.
“This is what I want to do,” Correa stated. But when his switch request isn’t accepted, he stated he received’t renew his enlistment when his contract is up subsequent yr. He’s promoting all his possessions and shifting to Honduras — something that can make it doable to carry his household collectively once more.
“You recruit the service member [but] you retain the family,” says Stephanie Torres, who was undocumented when her husband, Sgt. Jorge Torres, who had served in Afghanistan, died in a automobile crash in 2013. “You retain the family by letting them know, ‘You belong here. You serve too.’”
She and different advocates say that focusing on navy relations for deportation can hurt navy readiness by taking away a deal with the mission. Some service members could also be scared or unable to enroll their relations for navy advantages or assist applications.
Right now, Torres is working with the group Repatriate Our Patriots, which advocates on behalf of deported veterans, to construct up a program to assist navy and veteran relations who’re deported or are dealing with deportation.
Federal brokers put together undocumented immigrants for deportation at Biggs Military Airfield, Fort Bliss on Feb. 6, 2025.
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U.S. Military photograph by Cpl. Adaris Cole/DoD Southern Border 2025
One of many folks she is working with is Alejandra Juarez, who grew to become a face of navy household separation through the first Trump administration when she was deported to Mexico because the spouse of a embellished fight Marine veteran, abandoning her husband and two school-age daughters.
In 2021, after a number of lawmakers wrote letters on her behalf, then-President Biden granted her a humanitarian parole to reenter the USA and reunite together with her household.
Juarez crossed into the U.S. from Mexico when she was a young person and stated she signed a doc she didn’t perceive on the time that completely prevented her from gaining authorized standing.
Alejandra Juarez together with her household in 2022, following her return to the USA on humanitarian parole. Juarez is second from the suitable; her husband, Temo Juarez, who served within the Marines, is on the suitable.
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Photograph courtesy of Alejandra Juarez
“When my husband was called into active duty and put his life on the line, it didn’t matter if I had documents,” she instructed The Struggle Horse. “I used to be a navy spouse.
“We should be able to get a second chance.”
Earlier this month, Juarez’s parole expired, and she or he has no path to citizenship. She sees the administration ramping up its immigration enforcement and ending lots of its parole applications. She doesn’t wish to spend cash or time on what she assumes can be a useless finish.
When her parole expired, she stated, her immigration officer prolonged her a grace interval to remain in the USA for yet another month, to have fun her youthful daughter’s birthday. She’s turning 16.
Then, on the 4th of July, Juarez should depart the nation.
This Struggle Horse story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.
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