Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo has served for more than a decade. In early July, he took his wife, Maisa Lopes Eliaser, to what the family thought was a routine appointment at an immigration office in Alabama. They were trying to fix her legal status, the way military families have been told for years that they can.

Immigration officers asked Jaramillo and his 5-year-old stepson to step out of the room. A few minutes later, they were told she had been detained. The next time they saw her, she was inside an ICE detention center in Louisiana.

He is not a rare case. In August, the Associated Press published the first count of its kind: more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. service members have been detained since Donald Trump started his second term. At least six were deported, and one more left the country on their own. At least eight were still locked up when the story ran.

The government doesn't count these cases. The AP had to build the list itself, from thousands of federal court records, news coverage, and interviews with families and lawyers. It says the real number is likely much higher.

The rule Trump threw out

For decades, the parents and spouses of people serving in the military were generally left alone by immigration enforcement. That was true under Republican and Democratic presidents, and it was true in Trump's own first term.

Dan Gividen was ICE's deputy chief counsel from 2016 to 2019, under Trump. He told the AP that back then, ICE rarely went after a service member's close family unless they had committed a violent crime. "We would not place them into removal proceedings, period. That's insane," he said. "The fact that they're doing it now is just outrageous."

What changed was a piece of paper. On April 10, 2025, ICE issued a new policy on military service. It threw out a 2022 rule that made a family member's active-duty service "a significant mitigating factor that must be considered" before ICE moved to deport someone. Homeland Security later explained the new thinking to Congress in a single sentence: U.S. military service alone "does not automatically exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws."

In that same letter, dated February 18, 2026, the department told Sen. Elizabeth Warren that ICE had arrested 125 veterans in its first year back — 73 of them were held in detention and 34 put into deportation cases. Counting veterans and their close family together, 282 people were put into deportation cases. On the families of people still serving, the department said ICE "does not track that data point."

Arrested at the appointment

The cruelest part of the AP's findings is where many of these arrests happened.

For years, the government has offered a program for troops' spouses, children and parents who are in the country without legal status. It lets them get legal status without leaving the country first. It is formally called "military parole in place," and recruiters have long sold it as a reason to enlist: serve, and you can protect your family.

The AP found that troops' families have repeatedly been detained by ICE while doing exactly that — applying for the program or trying to fix their status, sometimes at the immigration appointment itself. And under Trump, the AP reports, the average wait to get it has more than doubled, to 12 months. That leaves families exposed for longer.

A few of the people the AP found:

• Air Force Tech. Sgt. Wendy Gbeve went with her father, Luis Alberto Ramirez Zavala, to a routine immigration interview in Missouri about his pending application. He was arrested there. She tracked him from a county jail in Missouri to an ICE facility in Texas. About two weeks later, she learned he had been deported to Mexico. He had spent most of his life working as a ranch hand in rural Illinois. Now his wife of 30 years, a legal permanent resident, is thinking about moving to Mexico to be with him. Gbeve's husband is also in the Air Force, and if she goes, no one would be left to watch their two small children if both of them were deployed. "That would be our entire safety net," she said.
• Marine Cpl. Jose Manuel Vilchis-Valle was trying to help his mother, Ursula Borja Valle, clear up an old deportation order — using the very benefit recruiters had pitched to him. She was detained at an appointment in August 2025 and sent to Mexico within a week. She had lived in the U.S. since the 1990s with no known criminal record. "They basically told me that if you serve, and if you served honorably, you can help your parents," he said.
• Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, when his wife was detained outside a Walmart in July — in front of their 6-year-old daughter. "How can I even focus on my military career because I have to worry about how my wife is doing?" he asked.

And there was Deisy Rivera Ortega, whose husband, Sgt. 1st Class Jose Serrano, has served in the Army for more than 25 years, including in Afghanistan. She was detained in El Paso on April 14, 2026, while attending her interview for that same military program. She was released a month later, after Sen. Tammy Duckworth personally called the Homeland Security secretary to push for it.

That is how the lucky ones get out. The AP found that a handful of these detentions drew public backlash that led Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to step in and secure their release. The rest wait.

What it does to the troops

This isn't only a story about the families. It's a story about the military, at a time when the country is at war in Iran.

The AP found the detentions have left troops without caretakers for their kids, delayed deployments, and forced some to take leave. Jaramillo would normally be training soldiers at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Instead, he is on administrative leave, raising his stepson alone. "No one is here to help me out," he said. Court records show at least one active-duty soldier halted her own deployment after her husband was detained, because no one else could care for their son.

Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer and retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, told the AP the old protections existed so troops could focus on their jobs. Taking them away, she said, is like refusing troops healthcare or housing: a soldier worried about a detained or deported family member is "not concentrating on their job anymore."

Army Spc. Romero Ralios spent nine months last year on the southern border, supporting Customs and Border Protection. This summer his own father — a Guatemalan landscaper with no known criminal record — was detained. His commanding officer, Capt. Mohamed Elmaola, called him a "phenomenal soldier" and said it is "very hard to communicate and to have credibility as a leader when your own subordinates are unable to get support."

The pitch is still running

You might expect the military to at least stop promising what the government is no longer delivering. Mostly, it hasn't.

The Marine Corps stopped advertising enlistment as a way to protect immigrant family members in June 2025, after the AP asked about it. The Army and the National Guard did not. In late July 2026, an official Army recruiter in California posted on Instagram that enlisting is "also about doing everything they can to help protect their parents who sacrificed everything for them." An Army spokesperson told the AP that recruiters are expected to highlight the benefits of service, and that the program remains in effect.

So young Americans are still being told that service will protect their parents, while their parents are being arrested at the appointments that are supposed to do it.

Congress paid for it and wrote no exception

Homeland Security says some of the people the AP found had earlier deportation orders, past removals, or drunk-driving or drug convictions — at least two had such convictions, it said. But the agency gave no details on most of the cases. And the old rule never said these families were above the law. It said ICE had to weigh a family member's service before acting. That is the part that's gone.

A Republican Congress could have written that protection into law. Instead, it wrote a check. On June 9, 2026, the House passed $70 billion more for ICE and the Border Patrol by just two votes, with not a single Republican voting no. As we documented, the only limits written into that law were about equipment and hiring. Nothing about who ICE may target. Nothing for military families.

Then came the photo ops. In July, Maria Elvira Salazar held a news conference calling for the release of the wife of a retired staff sergeant who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The immigration system is failing the honorable and good Americans," she said. In June, she had been one of those deciding votes — as we covered when she cut an ad telling Trump his crackdown had gone "too far".

When Democrats pressed further, the Republicans who oversee the military stayed quiet. On August 9, 2026, more than 60 Democratic lawmakers wrote to Homeland Security, the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs asking whether the agencies coordinated these arrests, and urging the administration to restore protections for military families. The two Republicans who chair the Senate committees that oversee the military and veterans, Sens. Roger Wicker and Jerry Moran, did not respond to requests for comment.

Two months later, a Republican congressman went on Newsmax and called longtime residents swept up by ICE "collateral damage".

What the record shows

Since Trump's second term began, his administration has detained more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. troops and deported at least six, after scrapping a rule that required ICE to weigh a family member's military service. Some were arrested at the very immigration appointments the military still advertises as a reason to enlist. In June, the House gave ICE and the Border Patrol $70 billion more without a single Republican voting no, and the law includes no protection for military families.

Source

Associated Press: "50-plus military spouses, parents detained in immigration crackdown"