“She was still breastfeeding”: Marine veteran’s wife taken by ICE as protections for military families disappear
Every night, Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre tells his toddler the same lie: “Mama will be back soon.” In reality, he doesn’t know when — or if — his wife Paola is coming home. She was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month and now sits in a rural detention center eight hours away from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Clouatre, a disabled veteran and father of two young children, says he’s just trying to hold everything together. “When Lyn’s hungry, I give her formula,” he said of his 3-month-old daughter, who had been breastfeeding. “But I worry how this will affect her bonding.”
Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national, is one of tens of thousands caught in the Trump administration’s brutal ramp-up of deportations — a push to detain 3,000 immigrants a day. Even military families, once afforded some level of deference, are no longer shielded. “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.”
They were doing everything by the book. After marrying in 2024, Paola applied for a green card. But during her May 27 immigration appointment, a USCIS staffer asked about a 2018 deportation order — one issued after her mother missed an asylum hearing. Paola had been estranged from her mother for years and says she had no idea the order even existed.
After being told to wait for “paperwork,” ICE officers handcuffed her on the spot. “She handed me her ring,” Adrian recalled, choking up. “It’s just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, the couple’s attorney and a former immigration judge. “You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?”
Since then, the family has filed a motion to reopen her case. But time is running out. USCIS and ICE have made clear there is no more leeway — even for the families of veterans. In fact, USCIS recently admitted to referring over 26,000 similar cases for deportation. And yet, military recruiters continue to market enlistment to Latino communities as a path to protect undocumented family members — a promise now exposed as hollow.
Marine Corps recruiters have been told to stop implying that they can “secure immigration relief,” but the damage is done. “It sends the wrong message to the recruits,” said military immigration expert Margaret Stock.
Meanwhile, Paola remains behind bars, far from her baby, far from her husband, and far from the country that promised her protection if she followed the rules. “She was not aware of the removal order, so she was not knowingly defying it,” Adrian said. “If she had been arrested, she would have been deported long ago, and we would never have met.”
