ICE detained the wife of an active-duty Army sergeant at an El Paso immigration appointment as military-family leniency ended

On April 14, 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Deisy Rivera Ortega as she and her husband, active-duty Army Sgt. 1st Class Jose Serrano, attended a scheduled appointment with immigration services in El Paso, Texas. Serrano, who has served three tours in Afghanistan, said agents took his wife into custody at the end of a hallway without presenting a warrant: "Arrested without any order, any warrant." The couple had come to take steps toward Rivera Ortega's permanent residency under the "parole in place" policy, which had previously offered spouses of service members a possible pathway to legal status.

Rivera Ortega, a native of El Salvador, held a valid work permit and had earlier been granted a withholding of removal specifically to El Salvador, according to her attorney. The Department of Homeland Security said she had entered the United States in 2016 and that an immigration judge issued a final order of removal in December 2019, stating that "work authorization does not confer any legal status to be in the country." DHS moved to pursue her removal to Mexico — a country where, her attorney noted, she has no ties — rather than to El Salvador. She was held at the El Paso Service Processing Center and challenged her detention in U.S. District Court, seeking an order to block the deportation.

The arrest followed DHS's April 2025 elimination of a 2022 policy that had treated a family member's military service as a "significant mitigating factor" in deciding whether to pursue immigration enforcement. Under the administration's replacement policy, "military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws."

Updates

2026-05-14 — ICE released Rivera Ortega after a month in custody [2]

ICE released Deisy Rivera Ortega on May 14, 2026, after one month in detention, returning her to her family. Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Army veteran, said she had personally called Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to request the release, adding that Rivera Ortega "should never have been in this situation to begin with."