路易斯安那州巴吞鲁日。-美国移民和海关执法局官员上个月拘留了他们的母亲后，海军陆战队老兵阿德里安·克劳阿特不知道如何告诉他的孩子他们的母亲去了哪里。
当他快2岁的儿子诺亚在睡觉前问妈妈时，他只是告诉他，“妈妈很快就回来。”当他3个月大、正在哺乳的女儿Lyn感到饥饿时，他给了她一瓶婴儿配方奶粉。他担心如果没有皮肤接触，他的新生儿将如何与母亲相处。
随着特朗普政府推动移民官员每天逮捕3000人，他的妻子保拉是数万名被拘留并面临驱逐出境的人之一。
移民法专家说，尽管海军陆战队招募人员宣传入伍是为了保护没有合法身份的家庭，但严格移民执法的指令已经抛弃了以前给予军人家庭的尊重。政府备忘录显示，负责帮助军人家庭成员获得合法身份的联邦机构现在将他们驱逐出境。
为了看望他的妻子，Adrian Clouatre不得不从他们在路易斯安那州巴吞鲁日的家到门罗的一个农村冰拘留中心往返8个小时。作为一名伤残退伍军人，他抓住了每一个机会。
2022年，25岁的墨西哥国民Paola Clouatre在他五年兵役的最后几个月，在南加州一家夜总会遇到了26岁的Adrian Clouatre，他的母亲十多年前带她到这个国家寻求庇护。不到一年，他们就在手臂上纹上了彼此的名字。
他们在2024年结婚后，Paola Clouatre寻求绿卡在美国合法生活和工作。Adrian Clouatre说他“不是一个非常政治化的人”，但他认为他的妻子应该在美国合法生活。
“我完全赞成‘把罪犯赶出这个国家’，对吗?”他说。“但在这里努力工作的人，尤其是那些与美国人结婚的人——我的意思是，这一直是获得绿卡的一种方式。”
在绿卡会议上被拘留
起初，申请Paola Clouatre绿卡的过程很顺利，但最终她得知，在她的母亲未能出席移民听证会后，ICE于2018年发布了驱逐她的命令。
克劳阿特和她的母亲已经分居多年——克劳阿特十几岁时从无家可归者收容所出来——她丈夫说，直到几个月前，克劳阿特对她母亲缺席听证会或驱逐令“一无所知”。
Adrian Clouatre回忆说，作为绿卡申请的一部分，美国公民和移民服务局的一名工作人员在5月27日的一次约会中询问了驱逐令。在Paola Clouatre解释说她正在试图重新审理她的案件后，该工作人员要求她和她的丈夫在大厅等待后续预约的文件，她的丈夫说，他认为这是一个“策略”。
很快，警察赶到，给Paola Clouatre戴上手铐，她将结婚戒指交给丈夫保管。
Adrian Clouatre热泪盈眶，他说他和他的妻子已经尽力“做正确的事情”,他认为ICE官员应该在逮捕方面有更多的自由裁量权，尽管他理解他们正在努力做他们的工作。
“对待老兵的方式太糟糕了，”代表这对夫妇的前移民法官凯里·霍利迪(Carey Holliday)说。“你带着他们的妻子，把他们送回墨西哥?”
Holliday说，Clouatres向加州移民法官提交了一份动议，要求重新审理Paola的驱逐令案件，并正在等待回音。
军人家庭的自由裁量权减少
国土安全部发言人特里西亚·麦克劳克林(Tricia McLaughlin)在一份电子邮件声明中表示，保拉·克洛艾“非法进入该国”，政府“不会无视法治。”
“无视移民法官的离开美国的命令是一个坏主意，”美国公民和移民服务局在6月9日的一份报告中说在X上发布这似乎是指克洛瓦特的案件。该机构补充说，政府“在让美国再次变得安全时，记性很好，对挑衅行为不能容忍。”
Adrian Clouatre表示，该机构的X帖子没有准确反映他妻子的情况，因为她在未成年时随母亲进入该国寻求庇护。
“她不知道驱逐令，所以她不是故意违抗命令，”他说。“如果她被捕了，早就被驱逐出境了，我们也永远不会相遇。”
霍利迪和军事移民法专家玛格丽特·斯托克说，在特朗普政府推动驱逐出境之前，美国公民及移民服务局为退伍军人为家庭成员寻求法律地位提供了更大的酌处权。
在一个2月28日备忘录该机构表示，它“将不再豁免”驱逐过去受到更多优待的群体中的人。斯托克说，这包括军人或退伍军人的家庭。截至6月12日该机构表示，它已将超过26，000起案件提交给移民局进行驱逐。
USCIS仍然提供一个项目，允许非法进入美国的军事人员的家庭成员在申请绿卡时留在美国。斯托克说，但似乎不再有回旋的余地，例如给像Paola Clouatre这样的退伍军人的配偶一个机会，在不面临逮捕的情况下停止她的主动驱逐令。
但许多海军陆战队招募人员继续在社交媒体上发布针对拉丁美洲人的广告，宣传入伍是为家人获得“免于驱逐”的一种方式。
“我认为，当政府似乎不再提供这些移民福利时，他们宣传人们将获得移民福利是不好的，”斯托克说。“这给新兵传递了错误的信息。”
海军陆战队发言人泰勒·赫拉瓦克中士(Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac)告诉美联社(Associated Press)，招募人员现在被告知，他们“没有适当的权力”来“暗示海军陆战队可以为申请人或他们的家人获得移民救济。”
ICE detains Marine Corps veteran's wife who was still breastfeeding their baby
BATON ROUGE, La. --Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre doesn't know how to tell his children where their mother went after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her last month.
When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, “Mama will be back soon.” When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He’s worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact.
His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day.
Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show.
To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get.
Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her into the country seeking asylum more than a decade ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other's names on their arms.
After they married in 2024, Paola Clouatre sought a green card to legally live and work in the U.S. Adrian Clouatre said he is “not a very political person” but believes his wife deserved to live legally in the U.S.
“I’m all for ‘get the criminals out of the country,’ right?" he said. "But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that’s always been a way to secure a green card.”
Detained at a green card meeting
The process to apply for Paola Clouatre's green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.
Clouatre and her mother had been estranged for years — Clouatre cycled out of homeless shelters as a teenager — and up until a couple of months ago, Clouatre had “no idea” about her mother's missed hearing or the deportation order, her husband said.
Adrian Clouatre recalled that a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staffer asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby for paperwork regarding a follow-up appointment, which her husband said he believed was a “ploy.”
Soon, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouatre, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping.
Adrian Clouatre, eyes welling with tears, said he and his wife had tried to “do the right thing” and that he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs.
“It’s just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. “You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?”
The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola's deportation order and are waiting to hear back, Holliday said.
Less discretion for military families
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre “is in the country illegally" and that the administration is “not going to ignore the rule of law.”
“Ignoring an Immigration Judge’s order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9post on Xwhich appeared to refer to Clouatre's case. The agency added that the government “has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.”
Adrian Clouatre said the agency's X post does not accurately reflect his wife's situation because she entered the country as a minor with her mother, seeking asylum.
“She was not aware of the removal order, so she was not knowingly defying it,” he said. “If she had been arrested, she would have been deported long ago, and we would never have met."
Prior to the Trump administration's push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.
In aFeb. 28 memo, the agency said it “will no longer exempt” from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As ofJune 12, the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation.
USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the U.S. to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran's spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said.
But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain “protection from deportation” for family members.
“I think it’s bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,” Stock said. “It sends the wrong message to the recruits.”
Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are “not the proper authority” to “imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”
