US President Donald Trump's administration has detained dozens of parents and spouses of active-duty US troops as it rolls back immigration protections for military families to pursue its mass deportation agenda, an investigation found.
More than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained since Trump took office for a second term, and at least six have been deported, the probe found in the first accounting of such detentions, which the government does not track. At least eight immediate family members of US service members remain in federal immigration custody.
Parents and spouses of people in the military have generally been shielded from deportation under bipartisan consensus for decades.
But the probe found they're now routinely being detained for months as they try to adjust their legal status through the policies available to service members' close relatives and even as the military continues to recruit by advertising immigration benefits for enlistees' families.
Experts warn that the reversal could undermine military preparedness even as the US is at war in Iran. It's left military members without emotional support and caretakers for their children, delayed deployments and forced some to take leave
"How can I even focus on my military career because I have to worry about how my wife is doing?" said Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, who was stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas, when his wife was detained outside a Walmart in front of their 6-year-old daughter in July.
A handful of detentions of service members' spouses have prompted public backlash and led to intervention by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to secure their release.
"DHS and ICE value the contributions of all those who have served in the US military," DHS said in a statement. "US military service alone does not automatically grant lawful immigration status, or exempt aliens from the consequences of violating US immigration laws."
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Wendy Gbeve, 30, said she hasn't had a good night's sleep since her father, Luis Alberto Ramirez Zavala, was detained by immigration officials last month. Gbeve was there when he was arrested at a routine interview with US Citizenship and Immigration Services in Missouri about his pending application for legal status.
She spent hours refreshing the USCIS page to track where the government was taking her father: from a county jail in Missouri to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Texas. Finally, roughly two weeks after he was detained, she found out he had been deported to his native Mexico.
Gbeve said ICE still hasn't informed her family why her father was removed so quickly. Ramirez Zavala spent most of his life in the US working as a ranch hand in rural Illinois.
Ramirez Zavala's wife of 30 years, a legal permanent resident, is considering returning to Mexico to be with her husband. For Gbeve, whose husband is also in the Air Force, that would leave no one to watch their children, ages 2 and 4, if both were deployed.
Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo, an aviation operations specialist who has served for more than a decade, said he would normally be involved in training soldiers at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Instead, he is on administrative leave, caring for his 5-year-old stepson, Noah, after his Brazilian wife, Maisa Lopes Eliaser, was detained in early July.
It happened during what the family thought was a routine appointment at a USCIS office in Alabama. Eliaser arrived in the US on a tourist visa in 2019, and the couple was trying to change her status.
Immigration officials asked Jaramillo and his stepson to leave the room. Minutes later, they were told that Eliaser had been detained. The next time they saw her was inside a detention facility.
"It is really overwhelming because I need to take care of my kid by myself. No one is here to help me out," Jaramillo said.
At least one active-duty soldier halted her imminent deployment after her husband was detained by immigration officers, leaving no one to care for their then-5-year-old son, court records show. A judge eventually ordered the husband released.Trump's policy is a reversal even from his first administration
A new policy, implemented in April 2025, states that "military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating US immigration laws."Experts in military immigration law said this marks a stark shift from previous administrations across the political spectrum, including Trump's first administration.
Dan Gividen, who served as ICE's deputy chief counsel from 2016 to 2019 under Trump, said that during his time as an ICE prosecutor, immigration authorities rarely detained service members' immediate family members unless they had committed violent crimes.
ICE previously generally cancelled past removal orders and allowed parents or spouses of troops to adjust their legal status, said Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney and retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. She said that's because the government wanted to ensure troops focused on their duties.
Even some congressional Republicans who are otherwise largely supportive of Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown have pushed for the release of service members' relatives.
Although DHS said it does not have data on active-duty troops, it has released figures for former service members, who also qualify for immigration benefits along with their immediate families. From January 20, 2025, through January 26, 2026, immigration authorities detained 125 military veterans — placing 34 into removal proceedings — and arrested more than 150 immediate family members, DHS said in a letter to several Democratic senators.
Military recruiters tout immigration benefits for troops' families as a selling point to enlist.
One of the military's most highly advertised immigration benefits is "military parole-in-place," which allows the spouses, children and parents of active-duty service members and veterans to obtain legal immigration status from within the country. Not everyone qualifies: Those who overstayed visas or who already applied for legal status at the border, for example.
The policy was implemented under Republican President George W. Bush during the US war with Iraq in 2007 and codified under Democratic President Barack Obama. DHS agencies can grant it on a case-by-case basis.
Under Trump, the average time it takes to receive military parole-in-place has more than doubled to 12 months, according to USCIS data. That leaves military families more vulnerable to being placed in ICE custody.
It was found that troops' immediate family members have repeatedly been detained by ICE while applying for parole-in-place or seeking to adjust their status, including during immigration appointments.
Marine Cpl. Jose Manuel Vilchis-Valle's mother, Ursula Borja Valle, was detained at an appointment in August 2025 and deported to Mexico within a week. She had lived in the US since the 1990s without a known criminal record. Her son was attempting to help her clear up a decades-old removal order through the immigration benefits that military recruiters had used to help convince him to enlist.
In other cases, ICE has detained people who had already been granted protection, with the agency later arguing in court filings that their parole status had been revoked.
"For some service members, enlisting isn't just about serving their country," read an Instagram post published in late July by an official Army recruiter based in California. "It's also about doing everything they can to help protect their parents who sacrificed everything for them."
Recruiters are expected to highlight the benefits of service to attract applicants and military parole-in-place remains in effect, Army spokesperson Christopher Surridge said.