The wife of an active-duty US soldier in El Paso, Texas, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement – at least the second instance of a military spouse being held by ICE this month.
ICE arrested Deisy Rivera Ortega on 14 April, according to the Department of Homeland Security, and she is being held at a detention facility in El Paso, records show.
Rivera Ortega went with her husband to an interview for the parole-in-place programme, which allows family members of US military personnel to stay in the US while their immigration cases play out.
“They just took my wife away,” her husband, Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano, told the BBC.
The situation left him anxious and distraught, he said.
“I’m searching on the internet how I can help my wife,” he said. “If not, I’m walking in the house back and forth. Or jumping in my car and just driving for four hours.”
In a statement, DHS said Rivera Ortega is a “criminal illegal alien from El Salvador” convicted of the “federal offense” of illegally entering the US.
Rivera Ortega, who is from El Salvador, crossed the border into the US in 2016 in the Rio Grande Valley region and applied for asylum, according to her attorney, Matthew James Kozik.
DHS confirmed her date of entry. Court records provided by her attorney show that in December 2019, a judge ordered Rivera Ortega’s removal from the US to El Salvador.
But in the same order, the judge also granted Rivera Ortega what is known as withholding of removal under the convention against torture. That order prevented her from being sent back to her native country on the grounds she could face physical harm.
The withholding of removal order also granted her permission to be in the United States.
In the second Trump administration, DHS has moved to deport people to countries other than their place of origin, a process known as “third-country” removals.
According to Kozik and Serrano, ICE has indicated it will deport Rivera Ortega to an alternative country, Mexico. Kozik called her arrest “arbitrary and capricious.”
“She was following the prescribed law of what someone is supposed to do,” he said.
Serrano and Rivera Ortega married in June 2022 in Westbury, New York, according to a copy of their marriage certificate provided by their attorney. Serrano, who was born in Puerto Rico, is a US citizen by birth.
Serrano has served in the Army for just under 28 years, and was previously deployed to Afghanistan, the US Army confirmed.
The morning of 14 April, Serrano said he accompanied his wife to what they believed was an interview with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for her parole-in-place application. But at the meeting, authorities flagged an issue with Rivera Ortega’s application, Serrano told the BBC.
He said authorities then led the couple down a hallway, where ICE appeared and detained Rivera Ortega as Serrano watched.
“It took me a minute, two minutes to react,” he recalled. “And then I started to ask, ‘what is going on, what happened, where are they taking her?'”
It was the last time Serrano saw his wife. The next legal steps for Serrano and Rivera Ortega remain unclear.
Despite the government’s actions, Serrano remains proud of his service.
“I love the Army,” Serrano said, even though he realises his wife’s situation is likely out of its hands. ‘”If I had to do it again…I’d go in and do it again.”
Earlier this month, ICE temporarily detained the wife of another US Army staff sergeant shortly after the two got married.
The agency held 22-year-old Annie Ramos, wife of Sergeant Matthew Blank, for five days before releasing her. Ramos is an undocumented immigrant from Hondouras who was brought to the US as a child.
By BBC News
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