Texas veteran pleads for wife’s release after ICE detention, deportation order

A retired Texas National Guard staff sergeant who spent two decades in uniform is pleading for the release of his wife, saying her detention by immigration officials has torn open a family built around service, citizenship and compliance. Wilmer Trujillo, 45, served about four years in the Army and 16 years in the Texas National Guard, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and retired in 2021. His wife, Arelys Barahona-Martinez, 40, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a scheduled check-in in Dallas and later held at Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma.

The case has become a test of whether military service offers any practical protection when a spouse faces deportation. Trujillo and Barahona-Martinez married in 2020 and live in Princeton, Texas, with Trujillo’s daughters from a prior marriage and Barahona-Martinez’s 20-year-old son, a U.S. citizen who has neurofibromatosis, a condition that has caused tumors, including in his nose. Trujillo told CBS News and the BBC that the detention has devastated the family and that he believed they were following the rules.

The legal record reaches back nearly 21 years. The Department of Homeland Security said Barahona-Martinez entered the United States illegally, first crossed in 2005, and was ordered removed by an immigration judge on November 2, 2005. DHS said she later returned in 2018 and was granted supervised release, but now will remain in ICE custody pending removal. Her attorney, Mark Shmueli, said she was ordered deported in absentia and did not know about the hearing, and that she has no criminal record.

Barahona-Martinez’s detention also fits a wider pattern that has unsettled military families. NBC News has reported on other recent cases, including the wives of Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre and Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, as advocates warned that such arrests can be demoralizing for troops and could undermine recruitment. In this case, the tension is especially stark: a veteran who served the country for roughly 20 years is now asking that his wife be allowed to stay with their family while a removal order from 2005 is carried out.