Army Sergeant's Wife Detained by ICE

0:00It's April 20th, from your city to your ears. This is Dallas News today, powered by AI. I'm Cory with the story. A U.S. Army sergeant with 27 years of service, including time in Afghanistan, is speaking out after immigration agents detained his wife. Last week in Texas, Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano, who's 51, says his wife Daisy Rivera Ortega, got picked up by ICE on April 14th during a routine. Immigration appointment in El Paso. She's lived in the U.S. since around 2016 from El Salvador, and had legal protection since 2019 that blocked her deportation. There, Rivera Ortega married Serrano in 2022 and held a valid work permit while working on a military base. She was there applying for a special parole program for spouses of service members, but officials say she entered the country illegally. Got a misdemeanor conviction for that, and faces a deportation order from December. 2019, possibly to Mexico, where she has no connections. Serrano's baffled, insisting she followed

1:05every immigration rule to the letter. The arrest is hitting him hard. He's dealing with PTSD, a brain injury, and now barely sleeping two hours a night. He loves the Army because ICE out of control for targeting soldiers' families like this. DHS defends the move, labeling her a criminal illegal alien still pending removal after full due process. This fits a bigger pattern under the current administration, where ICE is ramping a arrests of undocumented relatives of troops, dropping old limits. Unless there's a security threat. Lawyers have filed a court challenge arguing her detentions unlawful, and military advocates warn it's hurting troop morale and readiness. Serrano's fighting to bring her home before any third country deportation splits them for good.