The Transportation Security Administration is forwarding passenger lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to detain and deport travelers while denying them the chance to challenge the process, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. A Times report Friday revealed that information furnished by TSA provided the basis of ICE’s high-profile detention of university student Any Lucía López Belloza, who was deported following her arrest at Boston’s Logan airport en route to visit her family for Thanksgiving. On a near-daily basis since March, the agency has been sending files to ICE that include photographs of the person targeted for deportation, and flight information that ICE employs to detain people before they board.  The TSA’s participation in immigration enforcement is unprecedented, as is that of ICE with domestic travel; the program, kept secret until Friday’s report, represents yet another means of inducing collective fear en masse in travelers and other residents. It’s a widespread problem—other travelers have been detained at airports.  In the case of many immigrants like López, a student with no criminal record, those attacks defy orders by federal judges not to deport the people targeted—defiance facilitated by ICE’s collaboration with TSA, which prevents timely challenges. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the TSA’s collaboration with ICE and the secrecy around it. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote earlier this week about the second Trump administration’s immigration policy, “the US government is using its prosecutorial discretion—it is choosing—to normalize casual cruelty and overt racism. And it’s doing so ostensibly in the name of “protecting” the American people.”

In the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election, US Army veteran Sae Joon Park kept in mind a warning from an immigration officer: If Donald Trump were elected, Park would likely be at risk for deportation. Park was just 7 when he came to the US from Seoul, South Korea. A green card holder, he joined the Army at 19 “to serve the country that I believed in,” he said. He received a Purple Heart after being shot twice while deployed in Panama, but after leaving the military, he lived with PTSD. That led to an addiction to crack cocaine and, ultimately, trouble with the law. In 2009, he was arrested for drug possession. After he jumped bail, afraid he would fail a drug test, he served time in prison and was told he would be deported. However, because he was a veteran, he was granted deferred action upon his release, which allowed him to remain in the US as long as he checked in with immigration officials annually. Sae Joon Park joined the Army at 19 “to serve the country that I believed in,” he said. After living in the US for almost 50 years, he self-deported in June back to South Korea after learning the Trump administration planned to deport him.Sae Joon Park/News21 US Army veteran Sae Joon Park, pictured during Operation Just Cause in Panama, received a Purple Heart after being shot while deployed there. Park self-deported in June, after learning the Trump administration planned to deport him. Sae Joon Park/News21 For 14 years, he did just that while raising children and building a new life in Honolulu. In June, everything changed. When Park went in for his regular appointment, he was told he had a removal order against him. After talking things over with his family and lawyer, he decided to self-deport because, he said, he worried he could not survive extended time in detention while fighting deportation. “I could have ended up in ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’” Park said, referring to the Florida detention center that has come under fire for alleged inhumane conditions. “I was a legal resident. They allowed me to join, serve the country—front line, taking bullets for this country. That should mean something.” Instead, he said, “This is how veterans are being treated.” During his first term in office, Trump enacted immigration policies aimed at a group normally safe from scrutiny: noncitizens who serve in the US military. His administration sought to restrict typical avenues for immigrant service members to obtain citizenship and make it harder for green card holders to enlist—actions that ultimately were unsuccessful. Now, as the second Trump administration engages in a campaign to detain and deport immigrants living in the US, military experts and veterans say service members are once again targets. “President Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and he didn’t exempt military members, veterans and their families,” said retired Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, a lawyer who helps veterans facing deportation. “It harms military recruiting, military readiness and the national security of our country.” Under the Biden administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a policy stating a noncitizen’s prior military service was a “significant mitigating factor” that must be considered in enforcement decisions, including deportation orders. The policy also offered protection to noncitizen family members of veterans or those on active duty. In April, under the Trump administration, that policy was rescinded and replaced with one saying that while “ICE values the contributions of all those who have served in the US military … military service alone does not automatically exempt” one from enforcement actions. The new policy directs agents to ask about military service during intake interviews and to document service. However, local ICE leaders have the authority to proceed with deportations of those who have served, though they may consider factors such as community ties and employment history. Both policies barred enforcement actions against active-duty service members, absent significant aggravating factors. Under the new policy, noncitizen relatives of service members are not addressed at all. In the wake of all of this, some service members, like Park, are choosing to self-deport. In other instances, immigrant family members of soldiers or veterans have been detained; those include Narciso Barranco, a father of three US Marines who was arrested in Santa Ana, California, while working the landscaping job he had held for three decades. “Thousands of families like ours are being ripped apart,” Barranco’s son, veteran Alejandro Barranco, testified in July to a US Senate subcommittee on border security. “I want this committee to understand the human impact of the immigration policies of this administration. I want them to know that the people being ripped from our communities are hardworking, honest, patriotic people who are raising America’s teachers, nurses and Marines. “Deporting them doesn’t just hurt my family,” he added. “It hurts all of us.” There is no publicly available data on how many veterans are being affected, though ICE is supposed to track removals of service members and veterans and the Department of Homeland Security is typically required to share that information with Congress. A 2019 federal report found at least 250 veterans had been placed in removal proceedings between 2013 and 2018, with at least 92 ultimately deported. The report said that while ICE had policies for handling cases of noncitizen veterans, it did not consistently identify and track actions against those individuals. News21 could find only two DHS reports tracking removals of veterans. One, covering the first six months of 2022, said five veterans had been deported; another, for calendar year 2019, said three veterans had been deported. In June, US Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, and nine other members of Congress  wrote to the secretaries of defense, veterans affairs and homeland security seeking the number of veterans currently facing deportation—noting “some estimates” put the overall number of deported veterans at 10,000. In a news release, Ansari said all veterans “deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, not abandoned by an administration that turns their backs on their sacrifice.” Her office did not return messages from News21. DHS and ICE also did not respond to questions. In past years, bills to do more to protect immigrant service members and their relatives have been introduced in Congress. One measure, introduced in May, would give green cards to parents of service members and allow those already deported to apply for a visa from abroad. It’s still in committee. US Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat and Army veteran, has proposed several measures related to immigrant service members, but those bills have gone nowhere. Last year, for example, she reintroduced a bill to allow deported veterans who have completed the preliminary naturalization process to attend citizenship interviews at a port of entry, embassy or consulate instead of having to obtain parole to come back into the US. It died in committee. For Duckworth, deported veterans are not a partisan issue. “This is about the men and women who wore the uniform of our great nation, many of whom were promised a chance at citizenship by our government in exchange for their service,” she told News21. “It’s about doing the right thing and keeping our nation’s promise.” ‘I wanted to serve this country, this beautiful country’ As of February 2024, more than 40,000 foreign nationals were serving in active and reserve components of the Armed Forces, according to the Congressional Research Service. Another 115,000 were veterans living in the US. Credit: News21 Serving in the military has long been a pathway to citizenship, with provisions providing expedited naturalization for noncitizen service members dating back to the Civil War. During World War I, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, foreign-born soldiers made up 18% of the Army. Some units even became known for their immigrant members; for example, the 77th Infantry Division was nicknamed the “Melting Pot Division.” Since the end of World War I, more than 800,000 people have gained citizenship through military service, according to the CRS report. Since fiscal year 2020, service members from the Philippines, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria and Ghana accounted for over 38% of service member naturalizations. Generally, noncitizens who are permanent legal residents and who speak, read and write English fluently may join the armed forces. And during designated periods of hostility, noncitizens who serve honorably for any period of time—even one day—are eligible to apply for naturalization if they meet all criteria. The US is still considered to be in a period of hostility because of the post-9/11 war on terrorism. National Archives Foreign-born soldiers are pictured at a 1918 naturalization ceremony in Washington, D.C. Countries represented include Armenia, Austria, Italy, Greece and Germany. National Archives/Courtesy of News21 Despite that longstanding policy, the Department of Defense, during Trump’s first term in office, tried to make it harder for service members to naturalize by forcing them to complete six months—rather than one day—before obtaining the “certification of honorable service” required to apply for citizenship. Naturalization applications subsequently plummeted by 72% from fiscal year 2017 to fiscal year 2018. The American Civil Liberties Union sued, and in 2020, a federal judge struck down the change. Plaintiffs, including then-Army Pfc. Ange Samma, celebrated. Samma, originally from Burkina Faso, had lived in the US on a green card since he was a teenager. In 2018, he enlisted in the Army. “I wanted to serve this country, this beautiful country,” Samma told News21. Over 14 months, even after he’d been assigned to Camp Humphreys in South Korea, Samma tried over and over to obtain certification of his honorable service—to no avail. He finally became naturalized not long after the 2020 court ruling. This year, Samma earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He’s living in Statesboro, Georgia, while hunting for jobs. Because he now has citizenship, “There are many more opportunities that are open for me,” he said. “It’s very rewarding to have it. You feel proud.” The Biden administration wound up rescinding the six-month policy, according to ACLU attorney Scarlet Kim. As of now, military members can once again apply for naturalization as soon as their service begins. However, Kim notes, “If you don’t get your citizenship while you’re serving and then you’re discharged, what has happened is that you can potentially become vulnerable to deportation … despite having served our country in the military for however long.” That’s exactly the situation facing Army veteran Marlon Parris. Parris, who was born in Trinidad, has been in the US with a green card since the 1990s. He served in the Army for six years, including two tours in Iraq, and received the Army Commendation Medal three times, according to records filed in federal court. Army veteran Marlon Parris, seen here in Iraq, was detained by immigration agents in January. Originally from Trinidad, he has lived in the US since the 1990s. As the second Trump administration engages in its campaign of mass deportations, military experts and veterans say immigrant troops and their relatives are not immune. Tanisha Hartwell-Parris/Courtesy of News21 Before his discharge in 2007, he was diagnosed with acute post-traumatic stress disorder, which was cited when Parris pleaded guilty in 2011 to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to federal prison. Upon his release in 2016, he received a letter from the government stating he would not be deported, according to the group Black Deported Veterans of America. But on Jan. 22, just two days after Trump’s inauguration, agents detained Parris near his home in Laveen, outside of Phoenix. In May, a judge ruled that he was eligible for deportation. His wife, Tanisha Hartwell-Parris, told News21 the couple plan to self-deport and bring along some of the seven children, ranging in age from 8 to 26, who are part of their blended family. “I’m not going to put my husband in a situation to where he’s going to be a constant target, especially in the country that he fought for,” she said, adding that most people have no idea what immigrant service members face. Army veteran Marlon Parris and his wife Tanisha Hartwell-Parris pose for a photograph at a friend’s wedding in 2022. Originally from Trinidad, Parris has lived in the US since the 1990s, but he was detained by immigration agents in January. Tanisha Hartwell-Parris/Courtesy of News21 “People think that just because you’re a veteran … you should automatically have gotten status as a United States citizen,” she said. But the military, she added, “is different for immigrants. …. You’re fighting the same fight, but it’s not the same battle.” A report published last year by the Veterans Law Practicum at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law noted the connections between PTSD, criminal behavior and the deportation of noncitizen veterans. More than 20% of veterans with PTSD also have a substance use disorder, the report found, which can result in more exposure to the criminal justice system. That situation is “the most common scenario in terms of how deportation is triggered,” said Rose Carmen Goldberg, an expert in veterans law who oversaw completion of the report and now teaches in the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School. The report also noted that even though deportation does not disqualify veterans from health care and other benefits earned through service, “Geographic and bureaucratic barriers may ultimately stand in the way.” In 2021, the Biden administration launched the Immigrant Military Members and Veterans Initiative (IMMVI) to ensure deported veterans could access Veterans Affairs benefits. The program offered parole on a case-by-case basis to those needing to return to the US for legal counsel or to access care, and it sought to facilitate naturalization services for immigrant service members. Jose Francisco Lopez holds his military uniform at the Deported Veterans Support House on Saturday, June 28, 2025, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Lopez opened the home in 2017 to help veterans removed from the US, despite their service to the country. Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 In the program’s first year, 143 veterans living outside of the US reached out to IMMVI staff, according to congressional testimony. A 2022 story by the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse said 102 veterans had been allowed back to the US via the IMMVI parole program, and “over 30” had obtained citizenship. In response to questions about the status of the IMMVI program, USCIS directed News21 to its website about the program. Jennie Pasquarella, a lawyer with the Seattle Clemency Project, said the biggest flaw of the IMMVI program is that parole into the US is temporary – a “dead end” if a veteran doesn’t have a legal claim to restore legal residency or to naturalize. “We had asked the Biden administration to do more to ensure that there was a further path towards restoring people’s lawful status beyond parole,” she said. “Basically, we didn’t succeed.” A ‘lifeline’ for deported vets In the absence of aid in the US, more and more veterans are turning to help elsewhere. After serving in the Vietnam War with the Army, José Francisco Lopez, a native of Torreón, Mexico, experienced PTSD and struggled with addiction. He eventually went to prison for a drug-related crime and in 2003 was deported back to his home country. For years, Lopez thought he was the only deported veteran in Mexico—until he met Hector Barajas, a deported Army veteran who in 2013 founded the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana. Inspired, Lopez opened his own Deported Veterans Support House in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso. Michael Evans, left, and Pedro Chagoya stand outside of the Deported Veterans Support House on Saturday, June 28, 2025, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In 2017, an Army veteran opened the home to help veterans removed from the US, despite their service to the country. Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 Today, Lopez, 80, is a legal resident of the US but splits his time between El Paso and Juárez, providing deported veterans housing, food and advice about how to apply for VA benefits. Since opening the support house in 2017, he’s helped about 20 people. On a Saturday in June, four veterans stopped by to visit Lopez at the place they call “the bunker.” The gathering felt like a family reunion, with laughter filling the house as they shared memories of holidays spent together and other moments, both good and bad. Said Ricardo Munoz, who came across Lopez and the bunker in 2019: “It’s kind of like being out in the ocean and someone throws a lifeline at you.” Army veteran Ricardo Muñoz poses for a portrait on Saturday, June 28, 2025, at the Deported Veterans Support House in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Muñoz was deported in 2007 after serving time for marijuana possession. He has humanitarian parole to access health care in the US.Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 Air Force veteran Alfonso poses for a portrait on Monday, June 30, 2025, in El Paso, Texas. After being deported over two decades and living in Mexico, Alfonso obtained a green card and is now back in the US. He asked that his last name not be used because he is trying to naturalize and fears publicity could hurt those efforts.Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 Marine veteran Michael Evans poses for a portrait on Saturday, June 28, 2025, at the Deported Veterans Support House in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He was deported to his native Mexico in 2009 after a drug-related arrest. Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 Army veteran Jose Francisco Lopez poses for a portrait on Saturday, June 28, 2025, at the Deported Veterans Support House in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In 2017, Lopez opened the home to help veterans deported from the US, despite their service to the country. Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 Navy veteran Ruben Chagoya Talamantes poses for a portrait on Saturday, June 28, 2025, at the Deported Veterans Support House in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He was deported in 2014 after serving time in prison on a drug-related charge.Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 Army veteran Jose Bustillo Chavez poses for a portrait on Monday, June 30, 2025, in El Paso, Texas. Deported in 1999, Chavez is in the US on humanitarian parole but worries it won’t be extended under the Trump administration. Sydney Lovan/News21/News21 US Air Force veteran Alfonso, who enlisted in 1976, said he was shocked when he was deported in 2001 after being charged with driving under the influence in El Paso. He said he mistakenly thought he had automatically earned citizenship for serving. Alfonso asked that his last name not be used because he is now trying to naturalize and fears publicity could hurt those efforts. After living and working in Juarez for decades, Alfonso, with Lopez’s support, obtained parole back to the US in 2024 via the IMMVI program. He got his green card and now lives in El Paso, near his daughter. For Alfonso, military service was a family affair. His brother served in Vietnam, his niece has done multiple tours in the Middle East, one nephew is in the Coast Guard and another is a Marine. Citizenship or not, he said, “I was an American already, because I was willing to give my life for it.” He added, “When you’re willing to give your life for something that, you don’t know, in one second you might be dead—it’s something. It’s important.” ‘It’s a whole new world’ Army veteran Sae Joon Park poses for a photo with his daughter in December 2024 in Las Vegas. Park self-deported in June, after learning the Trump administration planned to deport him.Sae Joon Park/News21 Back in Seoul, Park, 56, is adjusting to life in a country he hadn’t even visited in 30 years. When he first arrived, he said, he cried every morning for hours. “I just couldn’t stop,” he said. “It’s a whole new world. I speak the language, but I don’t read or write, so I’m trying to really relearn everything.” For now, he’s staying with his father, but he worries about his family back in the US. His daughter works for the state of California. His son—also a military veteran—lives in Hawaii, where he works in cybersecurity and helps care for Park’s 85-year-old mother. “I don’t know how many more years she’s got,” Park said. “My daughter, if she ever gets married, I won’t be there for a wedding.” Park’s attorney started a petition to urge prosecutors to dismiss his criminal convictions, part of an attempt to cancel his deportation order and allow him to return to the United States. More than 10,000 people have signed. Army veteran Sae Joon Park and his son pose for a photo earlier this year at Waimea Canyon State Park in Kauai, Hawaii. Park self-deported in June, after learning the Trump administration planned to deport him.Sae Joon Park/Courtesy of News21 Park said he’s grateful for the support but has little faith that the country he fought for will ever allow him to come back. “I’m not blaming the military or VA – it’s literally the Trump administration,” he said. “What they’re doing is crazy. “This is not the country that I volunteered and fought for,” he added. “This is just really wrong.” News21 reporters Tristan E.M. Leach, Sydney Lovan and Gracyn Thatcher contributed to this story. This report is part of “Upheaval Across America,” an examination of immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://upheaval.news21.com/. The border wall, seen from El Paso, Texas, separates that city from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Friday, June 27, 2025. In 2017, an Army veteran opened the Deported Veteran Support House in Juárez to help veterans removed from the US, despite their service to the country. Sydney Lovan/News21/News21

The group chat lit up Jonathan Paz’s phone: Another immigration raid was happening a few blocks away. Paz took off running. He arrived minutes later to a quiet block of auto body warehouses in Waltham, Massachusetts, where SUVs with tinted windows had surrounded a sedan and apprehended the driver, a man in his late 20s. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in a balaclava and tactical vest stood in the street, talking to a 13-year-old boy who had been in the car. As Paz approached, he realized the agent was going through the boy’s phone and asking about his immigration status. Paz, 31, is the founder of Fuerza, a volunteer group in Waltham that responds to ongoing ICE arrests. On that gray morning in May, he had been in the middle of a neighborhood patrol walk when he got the text messages. He did as he’d trained dozens of volunteers to do: He pulled out his phone and started recording, stayed a few feet from the officers, and addressed the boy. “I was telling him to relax. I was telling him to breathe,” Paz says. “I was telling him his rights—like, don’t say nothing. You’re here. You’re fine with us.” > Within minutes, the agents had driven away with the man, leaving the child > alone on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. A handful of other volunteers were already on the scene, including Colleen Bradley-MacArthur, a Waltham city councilor, who recorded video as an agent veered his car toward where she stood on the sidewalk before telling her not to interfere. The operation dispersed as quickly as it escalated. Within minutes, the agents had driven away with the man, leaving the child alone on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. Volunteers walked the boy home—the man who had been detained was his dad’s friend—and suggested a pro bono lawyer who might be able to help the man, who was detained at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. They logged the incident into the records they’ve been keeping of ICE arrests. A few days later, the event made the national news, thanks to Bradley-MacArthur’s video.  But before any of that, on the sidewalk at the scene of the arrest, Paz pulled the boy aside for a pep talk. Paz knew what it was like to see ICE detain a loved one: When he was 14, his father was deported to Bolivia and his mother followed soon after, leaving Paz and his brother in the care of an aunt. Paz went on to become a Waltham city councilor and mayoral candidate, and he now works at a tech company while spending his free time on Fuerza. “None of this stuff is okay. I don’t want you to think this is normal,” Paz remembers saying to the boy, “but that doesn’t mean it defines you.” Paz talks with a Waltham resident to collect information about an ICE arrest that occurred earlier in the day.Sophie Park Waltham, a city of 66,000 a half hour from Boston, has historically opened its arms to immigrants. A quarter of the population is foreign-born, and a fifth is Latino. A short stretch of a main drag called Moody Street features restaurants with cuisines from a dozen countries. But lately, Paz says, it feels like his city is under siege. When I joined him on a neighborhood patrol last month, he kept an eye out for the license plates of ICE agents and flagged recent landmarks. “We had someone arrested today, I think, down the street that way,” he said, pointing down a residential block. We walked by the spot where the 13-year-old was left standing on the sidewalk, and the place where, a few days after that, a high school girl recorded officers smashing a van window to arrest a driver as she waited for the school bus. He nodded to a sedan parked outside a warehouse. “You start picking up on the fact that there are abandoned vehicles because people had a loved one taken,” he says. > At CPAC in February, border czar Tom Homan promised, “I’m coming to Boston. > I’m bringing hell with me.” Fuerza documented more than 50 arrests in Waltham in May—likely far fewer than the actual number. The dramatic escalation wasn’t surprising. At CPAC in February, border czar Tom Homan promised, “I’m coming to Boston. I’m bringing hell with me.” A month later, on a trip to Massachusetts, Homan stopped by a Mexican restaurant on Moody Street for breakfast. No arrests were made that day, but the visit spooked employees. It felt “like a mobster,” says Bradley-MacArthur, coming “to survey their territory.” The sweeps in Waltham typify ICE’s crackdown across the country—one that has swept up immigrants at court houses, schools, traffic stops, and workplaces, from day laborers in Los Angeles to construction workers in Tallahassee to coffee farmers in Hawaii. ICE recently announced that federal agents arrested nearly 1,500 people across Massachusetts as part of an enforcement surge in May dubbed Operation Patriot. Fuerza is one of countless rapid response groups that have sprung up to document arrests and warn other immigrants to stay away. In Waltham, when someone thinks they see ICE activity, they call a volunteer-staffed hotline run by a statewide immigrant rights group called LUCE. Flyers for the hotline are everywhere in Massachusetts, pinned to bulletin boards, taped to lamp posts, posted in the comments sections of neighborhood Facebook groups. The hotline receives as many as 100 calls a day, says volunteer Jaya Savita. LUCE then alerts Fuerza volunteers, called “verifiers,” who go to the scene of the alleged enforcement. If the officers are indeed with ICE, Fuerza spreads the word to neighbors. Verifiers are trained to document what’s happening without interfering; they practice stepping back at least seven paces, telling officers that they’re going to record what’s going on, and asking the officers what agency they’re with. They also talk directly to those being arrested, informing them that they have the right to remain silent. > “This administration is telling a story that they’re coming after criminals. > They’re not telling you that they’re taking small business owners and left a > bunch of kids without their dads.” LUCE was inspired by Siembra NC, a program in North Carolina that pioneered the volunteer-driven ICE hotline model. Siembra, which started during the first Trump presidency, has trained more than 1,200 volunteers outside of North Carolina this year, helping teach groups in Atlanta, Nashville, Phoenix, and California. Each has its own tactics. Some groups arm volunteers with loudspeakers; others do neighborhood patrols with walkie-talkies. Many, like Fuerza, also try to help the families of those who have been detained with referrals to pro bono lawyers, mental health care, and other social services. “Hundreds and hundreds of people keep showing up to these community watch trainings,” says Marlene Martinez, Siembra’s rapid response manager. The hope, she says, is to change the narrative about ICE arrests. “This administration is telling a story that they’re coming after criminals,” she says. “They’re not telling you that they’re taking small business owners,” she adds, “and left a bunch of kids without their dads.” Paz writes down information about identifying ICE for an employee at Azteca Market in Waltham.Sophie Park The recordings serve other purposes, too. Together, they help track trends: In Waltham, the federal agents often drive Dodge Chargers with tinted windows. As is the case elsewhere, many of the arrests are in the early morning or early evening, and the agents wear balaclavas. “That’s the easiest tell,” Paz says. The masked agents are “inside the car just waiting. And it looks really—very creepy.” The recordings also help cases get media attention. Videos in several immigration arrests that made national headlines—including the arrest of Rosane Ferreira-De Oliveira, a Brazilian mother of three in Worcester, Massachusetts—were taken by local volunteers. > One Fuerza volunteer says she wakes up at five in the morning—“when they do,” > referring to ICE officers. But the ultimate hope is that the recordings help get someone out of detention. At the scene of an arrest, “You’re like, ‘I hope they don’t do anything illegal,’” said one Waltham volunteer, who asked to go by her nickname, Nic. “And part of you is like, ‘Well, I kind of hope they do so that we can use this and get this person out.’” A white woman who was recently laid off, Nic has turned volunteering with Fuerza into effectively a full-time job in recent weeks, doing dispatch and training other volunteers. She wakes up at five in the morning—“when they do,” she says, referring to ICE officers. Nic had never paid attention to cars, but now, she says, “I’ve learned a whole bunch of car brands.” She was among the many volunteers I spoke to who took pride in the diversity of Fuerza’s more than 120 volunteers, who include retirees, activists, soccer moms, and church groups. Sometimes, though, the work can feel futile. Siembra co-founder Andrew Willis Garcés says he’s not aware of any recent cases in which someone was released from detention due to footage taken by a volunteer for Siembra or other similar organizations, though such evidence has been used in past cases. Paz hugs his sister, who happened to drive by, on the street where a 13-year old boy was left after his father’s friend was detained by ICE.Sophie Park “You get all this information in a video, and it’s like, well, now what?” Nic says. It’s “better than nothing, but like, how much better than nothing?” Like any mutual aid, the movement is hard to categorize and morphing in real-time. Fuerza recently dispatched volunteers to the local food pantry in case ICE showed up. “Then we realized that the turnout was so low because people are afraid to leave their houses, so we boxed up a bunch of the food and hand-delivered it to their houses,” Bradley-MacArthur says. “We’re building the plane while we’re flying it.” > Three weeks before we spoke, the mother heard from a friend that ICE was > looking for her. Ever since, she and the kids had been in hiding. Just before Memorial Day, I received a call from a Fuerza volunteer who is known for being a connector among Waltham’s Latino community. She asked if she could put me on a three-way-call—a mother Fuerza works with was willing to talk to me. (Both women asked to not be identified.) The mother, who is undocumented, lives in Waltham with her sons, ages 10 and 14. Years ago, the family immigrated from El Salvador, in part to seek medical care for the 14-year-old, who has a debilitating heart condition. Three weeks before we spoke, the mother heard from a friend that ICE was looking for her. Ever since, she and the kids had been in hiding. They hadn’t left the house, afraid even to take the trash out. The boys had missed weeks of school and doctor’s appointments, living off of food brought by relatives. The mother was trying to pass the time in a way that felt light for the kids, watching Superman and having pajama parties, but she could tell the boys were scared and stir crazy. They longed to go outside, to play in the park. She prayed that President Trump would soften his heart. No somos criminales, she said in a pleading voice.   When I asked what it was like for her to see videos of ICE arrests on social media, she began to weep. She lives in fear that she’ll be next. Did she have a plan if that happened? I asked. What would happen with the kids? She admitted she didn’t know. Rosary beads hang from the rearview mirror of a car parked on the street in Waltham. “You start picking up on the fact that there are abandoned vehicles because people had a loved one taken,” Paz said. Sophie Park At this point, the volunteer apologized to me, saying she needed to stop translating for a moment. In Spanish, she explained to the mother that she works with pro bono attorneys who are helping families plan in case parents are deported. The mother needed an affidavit authorizing another caregiver to take in the kids if she’s detained, and also a form with the kids’ passport information in the event they were sent back to her in El Salvador. In that moment, the two came up with the plan. If the mother were detained, the kids would go to their grandmother, who lives nearby. The mother relayed the pertinent information—her full name and the names of her kids, their birth dates, their grandmother’s phone number. “Today’s the first time she’s thinking about this,” the volunteer told me later. “She didn’t have a plan because it’s happened so fast.”

This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter. Army Sgt. Ayssac Correa had just started his day at the 103rd Quartermaster Company outside of Houston on the morning of March 13 when he got a phone call from his sister-in-law. She worked at the same company as Correa’s wife and had just pulled into the parking lot to see three ICE agents handcuffing her. “They’re taking Shirly away!” she told him. This month, as protesters clash with law enforcement amid immigration raids in Los Angeles, President Donald Trump has ordered 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 active-duty Marines to respond. The move injected the military into the highly contentious debate over immigration. For the tens of thousands of service members whose spouses or parents are undocumented, the issue was already personal, pitting service against citizenship. In his first week in office, President Trump signed multiple executive orders aimed at reshaping the country’s immigration policy, calling border crossings in recent years an “invasion” and arguing that many undocumented migrants have committed “vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans.” National Guard soldiers deployed this month to Los Angeles guard ICE agents during an immigration enforcement operation.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement But Correa and his wife weren’t too worried. After they got married in 2022, the couple had filed paperwork to start Shirly Guardado on the path to citizenship, and Correa assumed that, as an active-duty soldier, his family wouldn’t be impacted. “Me being in the military—I felt bad that it was happening, because I’m also married to somebody who’s going through the [immigration] process. But I was like, ‘Oh, there’s no way this is going to happen to us,’” he said. That misconception is common, immigration attorneys and advocates told The War Horse. But in reality, there is no guaranteed path to citizenship for undocumented military family members—and no guaranteed protections against deportation. > “I find it unconscionable that someone could step up to serve, voluntarily, in > our military and be willing to sacrifice their life for our country only to > have their families torn apart.” There are no reliable statistics on how many service members marry citizens of other countries, but it’s not uncommon, says Margaret Stock, a leading expert on immigration law and the military. The progressive group Fwd.us has estimated that up to 80,000 undocumented spouses or parents of military members are living in the U.S. “You can imagine what happens when you’re deployed in more than 120 countries around the world,” Stock said. Service members are often hesitant to speak out about their family members’ immigration status. “It’s taboo,” says Marino Branes, an immigration attorney and former Marine who first came to the U.S. from Peru without documentation. “It’s not like you’re announcing it to the world.” But he and other immigration attorneys told The War Horse they are working with active-duty clients who are scrambling to get their spouses or parents paperwork as immigration enforcement actions ramp up, and it becomes clear that military families are not immune. In April, ICE arrested the Argentinian wife of an active-duty Coast Guardsman after her immigration status was flagged during a routine security screening as the couple moved into Navy base housing in South Florida. Last month, the Australian wife of an Army lieutenant was detained by border officials at an airport in Hawaii during a trip to visit her husband. She was sent back to Australia. As the debate over illegal immigration roils the country, recent polling from the Pew Research Center shows that about a third of Americans think that all undocumented immigrants living in the country should be deported. Fifty-one percent believe that some undocumented immigrants should be deported, depending on their situation. For instance, nearly all those respondents agree that undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes should be deported. But just 5% think that spouses of American citizens should be. Lawmakers have reintroduced several bills in Congress that would make it easier for spouses and parents of troops and veterans to get their green card. “The anxiety of separation during deployment, the uncertainty of potentially serving in a conflict zone—these challenges weren’t just mine. They were my family’s as well,” Rep. Salud Carbajal, a Democrat from California, said at a news conference last month. He came to the U.S. from Mexico as a child and served in the Marine Corps. “I find it unconscionable that someone could step up to serve, voluntarily, in our military and be willing to sacrifice their life for our country only to have their families torn apart.” ‘I DIDN’T HEAR FROM HER FOR THREE DAYS’ The morning that ICE took Shirly Guardado into custody had started like any other. She and Correa had woken early to prepare their 10-month-old son for the day and then taken him to Guardado’s mother to watch him while they worked—Correa as a logistics specialist, handling the training for part-time Army reservists at his unit, and Guardado as a secretary at an air conditioning manufacturing company. Guardado had gotten a work permit and an order of supervision from ICE, meaning she needed to check in regularly with immigration officials, after she was apprehended crossing the border about 10 years earlier, her lawyer, Martin Reza, told The War Horse. Her last check-in had been in February, just a month before. “She reported as normal,” Reza said. “Nothing happened.” Shirly Guardado with her husband, Sgt. Ayssac Correa, along with her mother and son, the winter before she was deported to Honduras.Photo courtesy of Ayssac Correa But on that morning in March, Guardado got a strange phone call at work. Some sort of public safety officer had dialed her office and wanted her to come outside to talk. In the parking lot, three men in plain clothes identified themselves as Department of Public Safety officers, Correa told The War Horse. As Shirly approached, they said her car had been involved in an accident. But when she got close, they grabbed her and handcuffed her, telling her they were ICE agents. That’s when Guardado’s sister-in-law called Correa. He said the ICE agents refused to tell him where they were taking his wife. By the time he got to her office, they were gone. “I didn’t hear from her for like three days,” he said. When she was finally able to call him, from an ICE facility in Conroe, Texas, he told her there must have been some mistake. “They’re gonna realize you got your stuff in order, and they’re gonna let you go,” he told her. “I kept thinking, ‘Oh, she’s gonna get out tomorrow. She’s gonna get out tomorrow.’ And then that turned into almost three months,” he said. On May 30, ICE deported her to Honduras. It was her 28th birthday. PROTECTION THROUGH MILITARY PAROLE IN PLACE Correa had met Guardado in a coffee shop in Houston in 2020—“the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he said. After they got married, Reza helped the couple file paperwork for Correa to sponsor Guardado to get her green card. > “I kept thinking, ‘Oh, she’s gonna get out tomorrow. She’s gonna get out > tomorrow.’ And then that turned into almost three months.” Because Correa was in the military, the couple also put in an application for military parole in place, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services program that can help military and veteran family members temporarily stay in the U.S. legally while they work to get a more permanent status. The program grew out of the experiences of Yaderlin Hiraldo Jimenez, an undocumented Army wife whose husband, Staff Sgt. Alex Jimenez, went missing in Iraq in 2007 after his unit came under insurgent fire. Alex Jimenez had petitioned for a green card for his wife before he deployed, but while the Army searched for him, the Department of Homeland Security worked to deport her. After the case gained national attention, the department changed course and allowed her to stay in the U.S. temporarily. She was awarded a green card in July of 2007. Almost a year later, the Army found her husband’s remains. “After that case, the bureaucracy realized that they could go ahead and do this for everybody,” Stock said. “It would solve a lot of problems for military families, and it would contribute to readiness, and the troops are going to be a lot happier, because there’s a lot of troops that have this problem.” But not everyone is granted parole, and filing can be complicated. Historically, all of the military branches have offered legal assistance to military family members applying, as long as legal resources were available. But the Coast Guard recently “discontinued” its legal assistance to undocumented Coast Guard family members looking to apply for a military parole in place, a spokesperson said in an email to The War Horse. In response to follow-up questions, the Coast Guard called it a “pause” that resulted from a “recent review of assistance with immigration services available to dependents.” The War Horse has confirmed multiple examples of Coast Guard families being denied this legal assistance, although USCIS says the program is still active and military families are still eligible to apply. The other military branches say they have not made any changes to the legal immigration assistance they provide military families under the new administration. But even for families who are able to apply for parole in place, approval isn’t guaranteed. There are certain disqualifying factors, like having a criminal record, and USCIS offices have discretion over granting parole. “All of these field offices have a captain, a chief there,” says Branes. “They dictate policy there.” USCIS denied Guardado and Correa’s application for military parole in place. Even though ICE had released her to work in the U.S. with check-ins a decade earlier, and she had no criminal record, she was technically under an expedited deportation order, which USCIS told her was disqualifying. They told her to file her application for military parole in place with ICE instead. That’s not uncommon, Stock said. “But ICE doesn’t have a program to give parole in place.” When ICE agents arrested Guardado, Reza said, her request for a military parole in place had been sitting with the agency for over a year with no response. ‘FAMILIES SERVE TOO’ Correa is planning to fly down to Honduras shortly to bring their son, Kylian, to reunite with his mother. He’s put in a request to transfer to Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras in hopes of being stationed closer to them. He said his wife has been bouncing from hotel to hotel since landing in the country. Her brother, who is a legal resident, flew to Honduras to meet her there, since she has no family in the country, having come to the U.S. more than a decade earlier. He wants to continue serving in the Army, which he joined in 2018. Shortly afterward, he deployed to Syria. “This is what I want to do,” Correa said. But if his transfer request isn’t approved, he said he won’t renew his enlistment when his contract is up next year. He’s looking at selling all his possessions and moving to Honduras—anything that will make it possible to bring his family together again. > “When my husband was called into active duty and put his life on the line, it > didn’t matter if I had documents. I was a military wife. We should be able to > get a second chance.” “You recruit the service member [but] you retain the family,” says Stephanie Torres, who was undocumented when her husband, Sgt. Jorge Torres, who had served in Afghanistan, died in a car crash in 2013. “You retain the family by letting them know, ‘You belong here. You serve too.’” She and other advocates say that targeting military family members for deportation can harm military readiness by taking away a focus on the mission. Some service members may be scared or unable to enroll their family members for military benefits or support programs. Today, Torres is working with the group Repatriate Our Patriots, which advocates on behalf of deported veterans, to build up a program to support military and veteran family members who are deported or are facing deportation. Women being deported board a military flight at Fort Bliss, Texas, in February. Cpl. Adaris Cole/US Army One of the people she is working with is Alejandra Juarez, who became a face of military family separation during the first Trump administration when she was deported to Mexico as the wife of a decorated combat Marine veteran, leaving behind her husband and two school-age daughters. In 2021, after multiple lawmakers wrote letters on her behalf, then-President Biden granted her a humanitarian parole to reenter the United States and reunite with her family. Juarez crossed into the U.S. from Mexico when she was a teenager and said she signed a document she didn’t understand at the time that permanently prevented her from gaining legal status. Juarez with her family in 2022, following her return to the United States on humanitarian parole. Juarez is second from the right; her husband, Temo Juarez, who served in the Marines, is on the right.Photo courtesy of Alejandra Juarez “When my husband was called into active duty and put his life on the line, it didn’t matter if I had documents,” she told The War Horse. “I was a military wife. “We should be able to get a second chance.” Earlier this month, Juarez’s parole expired, and she has no path to citizenship. She sees the administration ramping up its immigration enforcement and ending many of its parole programs. She doesn’t want to spend money or time on what she assumes will be a dead end. When her parole expired, she said, her immigration officer extended her a grace period to stay in the United States for one more month, to celebrate her younger daughter’s birthday. She’s turning 16. Then, on the 4th of July, Juarez must leave the country. This War Horse story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

Lindsay Aime remembers the moment his Haitian immigrant community came under a national spotlight. It was September 2024 when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating people’s pets. To Aime, who is originally from Haiti but has lived in Springfield since 2019, the accusation was not just absurd. It felt like Trump was portraying his entire community as criminal. Today, the estimated 10,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield are under a different sort of spotlight. The Trump administration is trying to revoke the legal status that allows hundreds of thousands of Haitians and other immigrants to live in the US. Those moves are being challenged in court, but many are feeling panicked and confused. Aime is the co-founder of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield, a resource for immigrants looking for legal advice, especially now. “We don’t have any good news,” he says. “We keep telling all our people who come in our office: Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe. Stay out of trouble.” On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Aime about what it was like when all eyes were on his community during the election, why returning to his home country is not an option, and the challenges of trying to reunite with a son still living in Haiti. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.

On Friday, Federal District Court Judge Paula Xinis ruled that the Trump administration had failed to comply with a court order requiring it to provide information about what it is doing to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the US government mistakenly sent to one of the world’s worst prisons in El Salvador. When Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign appeared in federal court in Maryland earlier on Friday, he had no information to provide about what his client, the Trump administration, had done to comply with her order.  “Have they done anything?” Xinis asked, according to the Hill.  “Your honor, I don’t have personal knowledge,” Ensign replied.  “OK, so they’ve done nothing,” Xinis concluded.  As a result, Xinis held in her written ruling that the administration has “made no meaningful effort to comply” with her order, even though it is now backed up by a unanimous Supreme Court decision. The judge is now requiring the government to provide a daily status update that details where Abrego Garcia is and what the Trump administration is doing to bring him back to the United States. How the Trump administration responds has the potential to deepen a constitutional crisis. Some of the president’s top aides, such as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have made clear that they do want Abrego Garcia to return to the United States. It remains to be seen how the courts will respond if the administration continues to stonewall. On Friday, Trump appeared more willing to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision. “If the Supreme Court said bring somebody back I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “I have great respect for the Supreme Court The case began last month after Abrego Garcia, who is married to a US citizen and is the father of their three children, including a 5-year-old with autism, was sent to a Salvadoran megaprison in what the administration concedes was an “administrative error.” Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador because an immigration judge had previously ruled that he could not be sent to the country because he was more likely than not to face persecution there.  In response to a lawsuit brought on Abrego Garcia’s behalf, Xinis ordered earlier this month that he be brought back to the United States—rejecting the Trump administration’s claim that it didn’t have to do anything to fix its mistake because Abrego Garcia was no longer in US custody. The Trump administration quickly brought an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to try to overturn Xinis’ ruling.  On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision that largely upheld the lower court by holding that the Trump administration should “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia. It added that the government should “be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Xinis quickly followed up by ordering the government to provide information by Friday morning about the current location of Abrego Garcia, what steps it may have already taken to facilitate his return, and what additional steps it is planning to take to bring him back.  But the government did not do so. As Xinis wrote in her Friday decision:  > During the hearing, the Court posed straightforward questions, including: > Where is Abrego Garcia right now? What steps had Defendants taken to > facilitate his return while the Court’s initial order on injunctive relief was > in effect…? Defendants’ counsel responded that he could not answer these > questions, and at times suggested that Defendants had withheld such > information from him. As a result, counsel could not confirm, and thus did not > advance any evidence, that Defendants had done anything to facilitate Abrego > Garcia’s return. This remained Defendants’ position even after this Court > reminded them that the Supreme Court of the United States expressly affirmed > this Court’s authority to require the Government “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s > return. The Trump administration’s first daily update is due on Saturday at 5 p.m. Eastern. It will be back in court on Tuesday.