Baton Rouge, La. (AP) – Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre does not know how to tell his children where their mother went behind the American immigration and customs enforcement officials last month.
When his almost 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre simply tells him: “Mama will come back soon.” When his 3 -month -old, daughter of breastfeeding Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He is worried how his newborn contact will bind with her mother without skin contact.
His wife, Paola, is one of the tens of thousands of people in custody and is confronted with deportation while the Trump government insists that immigration officers arrest 3,000 people a day.
Even if recruiters from Marine Corps promote registration as protection for families who have no legal status, guidelines for strict immigrant enforcement have shown the practices of respectful respectful families to military families, Immigration Wet experts say. The federal agency that is responsible for helping military family members now refers them to deportation, according to government memos.
To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight -hour return from their house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural prison center in Monroe. Clouatre, who is eligible as a veteran with a service-handicapped, goes every chance he can get.
Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her illegally more than ten years ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, in a night club in southern California during the last months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year they had tattooed each other's names.
After being married in 2024, Paola Clouatre was looking for a green card to live and work legally in the US Adrian Clouatre said he is “not a very political person”, but believes that his wife deserved to live legally in the US
“I am completely for” take the criminals out of the country, “he said?” But the people who work hard here, especially those who are married to Americans – I mean, that has always been a way to secure a green card. “
Held on a green map meeting
The process to request for the green card of Paola Clouatre initially went smoothly, but in the end she heard that Ice had given an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother had not appeared during a hearing of immigration.
Clouatre and her mother had been alienated for years – Clouatre cycled out of homeless hiding places as a teenager – and until a few months ago Clouatre had 'no idea' about the missed hearing of her mother or the deportation order, her husband said.
Adrian Clouatre recalled that an employee of the US citizenship and immigration services during an appointment of 27 May early as part of her Green Card application. After Paola Clouatre had explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the employee asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby on paperwork with regard to a follow -up appointment, of which her husband said he believed it was a 'trick'.
Soon officers arrived and Paola Clouatre, who handed over her wedding ring to her husband for custody.
Adrian Clouatre, Eyes Welling van 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 about arrests, although he understood that they were trying to do their work.
“It's just a great way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who now represents the couple. “You take their wives with you and send them back to Mexico?”
The Clouatres submitted a motion for an immigration judge based in California to reopen the case about Paola's deportation warrant and wait to hear again, Holliday said.
Less discretion for military families
Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin of the Ministry of Interior Security said in an e -mail statement that Paola Clouatre is “illegal in the country” and that the administration “is not going to ignore the rule of law”.
“Ignoring the command of an immigration court to leave the US is a bad idea,” said American citizenship and immigration services in a post of June 9 on X that seemed to refer to the Clouatre case. The agency added that the government “has a long memory and not tolerance for challenging when it comes to making America safe again.”
Prior to the urge of the Trump government to increase deportations, USCIS offered much more discretion for veterans looking for legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, an expert in the field of military immigration legislation.
In a memo of 28 February, the agency said that it “will no longer exempt” from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of soldiers or veterans, Stock said. From 12 June the agency said that it has referred more than 26,000 cases to ice for deportation.
USCIS still offers a program with which family members of military personnel have entered the US to stay in the country because they request a green card. But there seems to be no longer room for leeway, such as giving a partner of a veteran like Paola Clouatre the chance to stop her active deportation order without connecting, Stock said.
But countless recruiters of the Marine Corps have continued to post advertisements on social media, aimed at Latinos, which promotes services as a way to get “protection against deportation” for family members.
“I think it is bad for them to advertise that people will get immigration benefits if it seems that the administration no longer offers these immigration benefits,” Stock said. “It sends the wrong message to the recruits.”
Spokesperson Master SGT from Marine Corps. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed that they 'are not the right authority' to imply that the Marine Corps immigration relief for applicants or their families can guarantee '.
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Brook is a member of the Corps for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non -profit National Service Program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
