Trump Lied to Get Them to Enlist, Then Deported the Families of Active-Duty Troops

Trump’s ICE has detained more than fifty parents and spouses of active-duty American service members and deported at least six of them, and the only reason anybody knows is the Associated Press sat down and counted. The government says it doesn’t track this. Come on. They count every deportation they can fit in a press release. These just go in a different column.Start with Army Specialist Romero Ralios. Last year he spent nine months deployed to the southern border supporting Customs and Border Protection. This summer they took his father. His words to the AP: “It was karma. I should’ve known. All those families I broke. I have regrets.”Serving has been a path to citizenship since the Civil War. And since 2007, when George W. Bush created it during the Iraq war, a protection called parole in place has kept a soldier’s spouse or parents from being deported while that soldier serves. Obama codified it. The Pentagon’s logic is simple. A sergeant worrying about whether his wife gets taken isn’t thinking about the mission.Marine Corporal Jose Manuel Vilchis-Valle says recruiters used exactly that to sign him up. His words: “They basically told me that if you serve, and if you served honorably, you can help your parents.” His mother was detained at a scheduled appointment and deported inside a week. She’d been here since the nineties, no criminal record.The Marine Corps quietly stopped running that pitch last June. The Army did not. Last month an official Army recruiter in California posted this. “For some service members, enlisting isn’t just about serving their country. It’s also about doing everything they can to help protect their parents.” That post is live right now. An Army of One. Turns out they meant it literally.And parole in place isn’t automatic. You apply. You wait. Under Trump that wait has more than doubled, to twelve months, so the paperwork meant to protect your family is now what tells ICE where to find them. Staff Sergeant Alexis Jaramillo brought his wife to a routine appointment in Alabama, five-year-old stepson along. Officials asked him and the boy to step out. Minutes later they were told she’d been detained. He’s on administrative leave now, doing bedtime alone.None of this happened by accident. In April of last year DHS declared that military service alone doesn’t exempt anyone from immigration consequences, and this White House wants thousands of arrests a day. Soldiers’ families are easier to find than anybody hiding.Dan Gividen ran ICE’s deputy chief counsel office under Trump. His verdict: “we would not place them into removal proceedings, period. That’s insane.” That’s not a critic. That’s their own guy saying even we wouldn’t do this.Draft dodger Donald Trump and a Secretary of Defense who got pulled off Biden’s inauguration detail as a possible insider threat over his tattoos have decided a uniform buys you nothing.And they’re doing it while starting a war with Iran. They purged trans troops, ran off women, and now they’re deporting soldiers’ parents. So who’s left? Who is supposed to fight this thing? Because the army they’re building isn’t the one that goes to Tehran. It’s the one that stands in American streets.Reporting by Jack Brook, Safiyah Riddle and Aaron Kessler for the Associated Press.https://apnews.com/article/military-families-immigration-trump-detained-deported-3337173bff1f06153738c217da52e846 Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe