Immigration Detention of Breastfeeding Mother Stirs Outrage among Advocates
Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre is struggling to explain to his children why their mother, Paola, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers last month. Paola, a 25-year-old Mexican national, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody facing deportation.
When their nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Adrian just tells him, “Mama will be back soon.” When their 3-month-old daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He's worried about how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact.
Paola Clouatre met Adrian at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other’s names on their arms. After marrying in 2024, Paola sought a green card to legally live and work in the U.S.
“I’m all for ‘get the criminals out of the country,’ right?” Adrian said. “But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that’s always been a way to secure a green card.”
Detained at a green card meeting
The process to apply for Paola Clouatre's green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.
Paola and her husband were asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After explaining that they were trying to reopen her case, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping.
Adrian said he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs.
“It’s just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. “You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?”
The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola’s deportation order and are waiting to hear back.
Less discretion for military familiesDepartment of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre “is in the country illegally” and that the administration is “not going to ignore the rule of law.”“Ignoring an Immigration Judge’s order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9 post. The agency added that the government “has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.”Adrian Clouatre said the agency's post does not accurately reflect his wife’s situation because she entered the country as a minor with her mother, seeking asylum.“She was not aware of the removal order, so she was not knowingly defying it,” he said. “If she had been arrested, she would have been deported long ago, and we would never have met.”Prior to the Trump administration’s push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.In a Feb. 28 memo, the agency said it “will no longer exempt” from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As of June 12, the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation.USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the U.S. to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran’s spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said.But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain “protection from deportation” for family members.“I think it’s bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,” Stock said. “It sends the wrong message to the recruits.”Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are “not the proper authority” to “imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”
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