A controversial incident playing out in El Paso, Texas has thrown a harsh spotlight on the overlapping tensions between US immigration enforcement policy and the treatment of military families, as an active-duty Army sergeant’s spouse has been taken into federal immigration custody — the second such case involving a service member’s family member this month alone.
On April 14, Deisy Rivera Ortega, the wife of 28-year Army veteran Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after the couple attended a scheduled interview for a parole-in-place program, a federal initiative designed specifically to let immediate family members of US military personnel remain in the country while their immigration applications are processed. What was supposed to be a routine step toward legal permanent residency turned into a chaotic separation that has left Serrano distraught and searching for answers.
“They just took my wife away,” Serrano shared in an interview with the BBC, describing the disorienting moments after the arrest. The long-serving soldier, who completed a deployment to Afghanistan and was born a US citizen in Puerto Rico, said he has been unable to settle since the detention, alternating between frantic online research for legal resources and anxious, aimless drives to cope with the stress. “I’m searching on the internet how I can help my wife. If not, I’m walking in the house back and forth. Or jumping in my car and just driving for four hours.”
According to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records, Rivera Ortega is currently being held at an El Paso-area detention facility. DHS has characterized her as a “criminal illegal alien” from El Salvador, citing her 2016 illegal entry into the US as a federal offense. But her attorney, Matthew James Kozik, and court documents paint a more nuanced picture of her immigration history. After crossing the Rio Grande Valley border in 2016, Rivera Ortega filed a formal asylum claim, court records show. While an immigration judge ordered her removal to El Salvador in December 2019, the same ruling granted her withholding of removal under the UN Convention Against Torture, a protection that barred the government from sending her back to El Salvador on the grounds that she would face significant physical harm there. The ruling also explicitly granted her legal permission to reside in the US while waiting for long-term relief.
Under the second Trump administration, DHS has expanded a policy of “third-country removals,” which allows the agency to deport undocumented individuals to countries other than their nation of origin. Kozik told reporters that ICE has notified the legal team it intends to deport Rivera Ortega to Mexico, a move Kozik calls completely unlawful and unjust. “She was following the prescribed law of what someone is supposed to do,” he said, arguing that her arrest is “arbitrary and capricious.”
The couple’s official marriage certificate, provided by Kozik, confirms they were married in June 2022 in Westbury, New York, making Rivera Ortega the immediate family member of an active-duty service member — a status that should have qualified her for the parole-in-place program she was applying for when she was detained. Serrano recalled that the couple was told the meeting was a routine interview with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that handles parole applications. After officials flagged an unspecified issue with the filing, the couple was escorted down a hallway, where ICE agents were waiting to take Rivera Ortega into custody 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?’” That encounter was the last time Serrano has seen his wife, and as of this report, the next legal steps for the couple remain unclear. Despite the trauma of his wife’s detention, Serrano says he still retains pride in his nearly 28 years of military service, even as he acknowledges the Army has no control over the immigration agency’s actions. “I love the Army,” he said. “If I had to do it again…I’d go in and do it again.”
This incident marks at least the second time ICE has detained a military spouse in the month of April. Earlier this month, the agency detained 22-year-old Annie Ramos, the newly married wife of Army Sergeant Matthew Blank. Ramos, an undocumented Honduran immigrant who was brought to the US as a child, was held for five days before ICE released her to her husband. The back-to-back cases have sparked renewed criticism of immigration enforcement policies that separate active-duty military families, who are already tasked with defending US national security.