Summary
Jose Serrano said immigration agents arrested his wife, Deisy Rivera Ortega, on April 14 as they attended an immigration appointment in El Paso, Texas, and he has been able to visit her since then at an ICE detention facility. Serrano, an active-duty U.S. Army sergeant who said he served three tours in Afghanistan, described the arrest as happening without a warrant or order in the moment she was taken into custody. Rivera Ortega, according to the case described by Serrano and her attorney, has been challenging her detention in federal court while seeking to block deportation to Mexico.
Serrano said the agents arrived during a visit at an immigration office to take steps toward permanent residency. He said a person opened the door, escorted them through a hallway, and at the end of it his wife was arrested. “Arrested without any order, any warrant … They took away my wife. They don’t tell me anything,” Serrano said.
Since her arrest, Serrano said Rivera Ortega has challenged her detention and asked a U.S. District Court to block deportation to Mexico, which he said is a place she does not have ties to. He also said active-duty troops are restricted from visiting her in that setting. An attorney representing Rivera Ortega, Matthew James Kozik, said she held a valid work permit and had previously been granted withholding of removal to El Salvador.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an email that Rivera Ortega entered the United States illegally in 2016 and that a judge issued a final order of removal in December 2019. In the same response, DHS said: “Work authorization does not confer any legal status to be in the country. Rivera-Ortega remains in ICE custody pending removal,” while the agency did not say whether Mexico would be the destination for deportation.
Rivera Ortega was being held at the El Paso Service Processing Center, and Serrano said he was able to visit Sunday and speak to her through a plastic pane. Her legal efforts include seeking an order blocking deportation while the case plays out in federal court.
According to Serrano, Rivera Ortega applied for consideration with her husband under the “parole in place” policy that had previously offered a possibly expedited pathway to permanent residency for spouses of service members. But the case surfaced alongside changes to how DHS considers military service when deciding whether to pursue immigration enforcement.
Serrano and the report described a policy change: DHS eliminated a 2022 policy that treated military service of an immediate family member as a “significant mitigating factor” in enforcement decisions, according to the account of the policy history. The administration’s new policy, as described in the report, states that “military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”