ICE is threatening to deport the wife of a Marine Corps veteran who was still breastfeeding their youngest child, according to reports.
Paola Clouatre, 25, of Baton Rouge in Louisiana, was brought to the U.S. from Mexico by her mother to seek asylum while she was still a child, her husband Adrian Clouatre told the Associated Press.
But when Paola attended a green card appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on May 27, she was detained by ICE over a seven-year-old deportation order that Adrian claims she had only recently found out about.
"I’m all for ‘get the criminals out of the country,’ right? 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," Adrian told the AP.
Now Adrian is left trying to explain to the couple's two-year-old son Noah why his mother is gone, while feeding their three-month-old daughter Lyn with bottles of baby formula.
The case shows how U.S. immigration authorities are abandoning the leeway once given to families of military veterans as they reportedly scramble to meet a new quota of 3,000 arrests per day.
"It’s just a hell of a way to treat a veteran," said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now the couple's lawyer. "You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?"
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP that Paola Clouatre is "is in the country illegally" and that her department "is not going to ignore the rule of law."
In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), which appeared to describe Clouatre's case without naming her, the USCIS said: "Ignoring an immigration judge's order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea. When an illegal alien from Mexico was apprehended and ordered removed by a judge in 2018, she chose to defy the order and stay in the U.S.
"Seven years later, she had another bad idea and applied for a Green Card. ICE took her into custody at our New Orleans office. DHS has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.
"Don't be caught in this situation. Do the right thing and use the CBP Home App to self-deport now."
Ignoring an Immigration Judge's order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea. When an illegal alien from Mexico was apprehended by @CBP and ordered removed by a judge in 2018, she chose to defy the order and stay in the U.S. 7 years later, she had another bad idea and applied for a…
— USCIS (@USCIS) June 9, 2025
Paola and Adrian Clouatre met at a nightclub in southern California in 2022, during the the final months of Adrian's five-year military service. They quickly fell in love, and got married in 2024.
Yet while applying for a green card, Paola found out that ICE had issued an a deportation order against her in California back in 2018, after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.
That was news to Paola, Adrian said, because she had been estranged from her mother since she was young and had spent much of her teenage years homeless and living in shelters.
The couple have applied to a California immigration judge asking to reopen Paola's old deportation case, but have not yet heard back, Adrian said.
Immigration experts said the USCIS had previously allowed a lot of latitude to military spouses, but had ended that policy earlier this year.
The AP also found Marine Corps recruiters still claiming on social media that enlisting in the service could protect recruits' family members from deportation.
A Marine Corps spokesperson said it had told recruiters they were "not the proper authority" to imply that the Corps could "secure immigration relief" for them or their families.
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