On April 14, Deisy Rivera Ortega went to an immigration office in El Paso with her husband, Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano, hoping to make progress on her application to remain legally in the United States. She left in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The appointment was part of the “parole in place” process, a mechanism that has traditionally allowed family members of military personnel to regularize their status without leaving the country.
“They just took my wife away,” Serrano told the BBC after the incident. The soldier, with nearly 28 years of service and deployments to Afghanistan, described the sudden turn of events: after being led down a hallway during the appointment, ICE agents detained Rivera Ortega without warning. “Arrested without any order, any warrant … They took away my wife. They don’t tell me anything,” he told the Associated Press.
Rivera Ortega, a native of El Salvador, entered the United States in 2016 and applied for asylum. In 2019, a judge ordered her deportation, but at the same time granted her a form of protection known as “withholding of removal,” which prevents her return to her home country due to the risk of physical harm. That measure also allowed her to remain in U.S. territory, according to her attorney, Matthew James Kozik, who described her detention as “arbitrary and capricious” and said that his client “was following the prescribed law of what someone is supposed to do.”
However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) maintains that Rivera Ortega is a “criminal illegal alien,” convicted of the federal crime of illegal entry. The agency insists that a work authorization does not equate to lawful immigration status and confirmed that she remains in ICE custody pending her removal. Although they have not specified where she will be sent, both the defense and her husband claim that authorities have considered deporting her to a third country, such as Mexico, even though she has no ties there. “We don’t know nobody in Mexico,” Serrano told CBS.
The arrest is a result of recent changes to immigration policy under the Trump administration. In April last year, DHS rescinded a 2022 guideline that considered a family member’s military service to be a “significant mitigating factor” when deciding on deportation actions: “Military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.” This shift has reduced the scope of protection that previously benefited spouses and family members of military personnel and veterans.
For Serrano, the situation is difficult to reconcile with his career in the armed forces. “I love the Army,” he told the BBC, while drawing a distinction between the institution and the immigration agency: “It’s not the army, sir. It’s ICE. ICE is out of control right now, sir, taking away rights, as soldiers, that we have.” The soldier also described how his wife’s detention was impacting him: “Since this happened, I’m sleeping only two hours a day, two hours a night.”
The defense has challenged the detention in federal court and is seeking to prevent a possible deportation, particularly to a third country. Rivera Ortega had a valid work permit and had begun the process of regularizing her status through her marriage, which took place in 2022. Her husband was able to visit her days later at the El Paso detention center, where they spoke through a plastic partition, while the legal future of the case remains undecided.
This is not an isolated incident. Earlier this month, another woman, Annie Ramos — the wife of a sergeant — was arrested at a military base in Louisiana just days after getting married. “We were doing everything right, but instead, they took her away from me,” said her husband, Matthew Blank. Since then, Ramos has been released, but her immigration battle continues.
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