Ice holds the woman of Veteran Marine Corp who is still breastfeeding their 3 -month -old child

Baton red, Louisiana – The veteran of the Marine Corps, Adrian Clouatre, does not know how to tell his children where their mother went after the immigration and customs’ application agents arrested him last month.

When her almost 2 -year -old son Noah asks her mother before going to bed, Clouatre simply said to him: “Mom will be back soon.” When her 3 -month -old daughter and breastfeeding Lyn is hungry, he rather gives her a bottle of baby formula. He is worried about the way his newborn will be binding with his absent mother, contact from skin to skin.

His wife, Paola, is one of the tens of thousands of people in detention and faces the expulsion while the Trump administration pushes immigration agents to stop 3,000 people a day.

Even if recruiters of the Marine Corps promise enrollment such as the protection of families without legal status, the directives of the application of strict immigrants have put deference practices previously granted to the families of the military, according to experts in immigration law. The federal agency responsible for helping members of the military family to acquire legal status now refers to expulsion, according to government memos.

To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre must go back and forth from eight hours from their home to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ice detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a veteran of the service handicap, has all the occasions he can obtain.

Paola Clouatre, a 25 -year -old Mexican national whose mother brought her to the country in search of asylum over ten years ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, in a nightclub in the south of California in the last months of her five years of military service in 2022. In one year, they had tattooed each other.

After their marriage in 2024, Paola Clouattre asked for a green card to live legally and work in the United States Adrian Clouatre said that he was “not a very political person” but believes that his wife deserved to live in the United States

“I am absolutely to” get out of the country’s criminals “, right?” He said. “But people who work hard here, especially those married to the Americans – I mean, it has always been a way to secure a green card.”

Detained during a green card meeting

The process of requesting the green card of Paola Clouatre went well at the beginning, but she finally learned that the ice had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother did not appear during an immigration hearing.

Clouatre and her mother were distant for years – navel has traveled homeless shelters – and until a few months ago, Navelle had “no idea” of the failed hearing of her mother or the expulsion order, said her husband.

Adrian Clouattre recalled that a member of American staff of citizenship and immigration services asked questions about the expulsion order during a appointment of May 27 as part of his request for a green card. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staff asked him and her husband to wait in the hall for documents concerning a follow-up meeting, which her husband said that he believed that he was a “ploy”.

Soon the police arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouattre, who gave her wedding ring to her husband for the guard.

Adrian Clouatre, his eyes in tears, said that he and his wife had tried to “do the right thing” and that he thought that ice officers should have more discretion on the arrests, although he understood that they were trying to do their job.

“It’s just a big way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who now represents the couple. “Do you take their wives and send them back to Mexico?”

The nails have filed a request for an immigration judge based in California in order to reopen the case on Paola’s expulsion order and are waiting to hear them, Holliday said.

Less discretion for the families of the military

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement sent by email that Paola Clouattre “was in the country illegally” and that the administration “will not ignore the rule of law”.

“Ignoring an immigration judge’s order to leave the United States is a bad idea,” said the United States citizenship and immigration services in a June 9 article on X which seemed to refer to the Clouateur affair. The agency added that the government “has a long memory and no tolerance for distrust when it comes to returning America again safe”.

Adrian Clouatre said that the post X of the agency does not precisely reflect his wife’s situation because she entered the country as a minor with her mother, in search of asylum.

“She was not aware of the order of dismissal, so she did not knowingly defy it,” he said. “If she had been arrested, she would have been expelled a long time ago, and we would never have met.”

Before the thrust of the Trump administration to increase deportations, USCIS provided much more discretionary power to veterans in the research of legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, an expert in military immigration law.

In a service note on February 28, the agency said that it “would no longer compete” from the deportation of people in groups who had received more grace in the past. This includes families of military personnel or veterans, actions said. As of June 12, the agency said that it had referred to more than 26,000 cases at the ice for expulsion.

USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military staff who have entered the United States illegally to stay in the country when they ask for a green card. But there no longer seems to be a room for the room for maneuver, such as giving the spouse of a veteran like Paola Clouattre the possibility of stopping his order of active deportation without facing the arrest, said stock.

But many recruiters of the Marine Corps have continued to publish advertisements on social networks, intended for Latinos, promoting enrollment as a means of obtaining “protection against expulsion” for family members.

“I think it is bad for them to advertise that people will obtain immigration benefits when it seems that the administration no longer offers these immigration benefits,” said stock. “He sends the bad message to recruits.”

Marine spokesperson Master SGT. Tyler Hlavac told the Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed that they are “not the appropriate authority” to “imply that the Marine Corps can guarantee the relief of immigration for candidates or their families”.