Washington, DC – On Saturday, U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped Luis Manuel Aviles Roa in Key West, Florida, and took him into federal custody despite his 19 years of living and working in the United States with a valid driver’s license, Social Security card, work permit, and pending green card application. His son, U.S. Navy sailor Joshua Aviles, learned of the arrest from the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, where he has spent more than nine months supporting American operations in the Middle East. Now he faces the possibility that his father will be deported before he returns home.
Aviles Roa is the latest name on a growing list. An Associated Press investigation found the Trump administration has detained more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members, deporting at least six, since ICE rescinded its policy treating a family member’s military service as a mitigating factor. Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo spent weeks fighting to free his wife after ICE detained her at a routine green card appointment, only winning her release after agents had already put her on a deportation flight. Last year, a landscaper and father of three Marines was beaten and detained outside a Santa Ana, California IHOP restaurant, and another Marine’s parents were detained at Camp Pendleton, the father still wearing a shirt reading “Proud Dad of a U.S. Marine.”
While Joshua Aviles serves our nation, defending American interests abroad, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are pursuing a mass deportation crusade at all costs, sparing no one. It’s the latest proof that the Trump-Miller mass deportation machine treats every immigrant, including the parents of men and women in uniform, as disposable.
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, issued the following statement:
“A U.S. Navy sailor abroad fighting for the country he loves was stunned that his own government at home had abruptly arrested his immigrant father going to work in Florida. Navy sailor Joshua Aviles learned while defending his country over 7,000 miles from home that his hardworking father was just taken by the same government he served. Luis Manuel Aviles Roa holds a work permit, a Social Security card, and a driver’s license while waiting for his green card. None of this mattered to an administration chasing deportation quotas. Trump and Miller are showing military families the same disdain they show our Constitution. Instead of supporting service members, they are tearing military families apart. The Trump Administration is increasingly lost at sea over its rabid, despicable anti-immigration surge. Congress must hold DHS and ICE accountable.”
