An American citizen who served in the U.S. Army and the Texas National Guard for roughly 20 years is desperately urging federal immigration officials to release his wife, who is facing deportation to her native Honduras.
Retired Staff Sgt. Wilmer Trujillo said his wife, Arelys Barahona-Martinez, 40, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday during a check-in appointment at an agency office in Dallas.
In an interview with CBS News Friday, Trujillo, 45, said his “heart broke” when he was told his wife would be “detained and deported.”
Trujillo said he enlisted in the military in the late 1990s, right after high school. He said he served in the Army for approximately four years and the Texas National Guard for another 16 years, and he was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. He retired in 2021.
Wilmer Trujillo 
“I don’t want to hate on ICE. I don’t want to hate on anybody, but yeah, it boggles me. It rips my heart apart,” Trujillo said. “I love this country, and for this country to rip apart my family and take away my wife; she’s my rock and she is my backbone to this family.”
Trujillo and Barahona-Martinez married in 2020, legal documents show. The couple lives in Princeton, Texas, with Trujillo’s daughters from a prior marriage and Barahona-Martinez’s 20-year-old son, a U.S. citizen with neurofibromatosis, a medical condition which has led to the emergence of tumors, including in his nose. Trujillo said they’ve become a tight-knit family over the past years.
In a statement to CBS News, the Department of Homeland Security said ICE arrested Barahona-Martinez on June 10, noting she entered the U.S. illegally. The department cited a deportation order from over 20 years ago.
“Barahona-Martinez received full due process and was issued a final order of removal from an immigration judge on November 2, 2005,” DHS added. “The Trump administration is not going to ignore the rule of law. She will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the U.S.”
As of Friday, Barahona-Martinez was being held by ICE at the Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma, according to the agency’s online detainee tracker.
Mark Shmueli, Barahona-Martinez’s immigration lawyer, said his client does not have a criminal record. He said she first crossed the southern border illegally in 2005 to enter the U.S., where she had her son before going back to Honduras with him in 2006.
Shmueli confirmed that Barahona-Martinez was issued a deportation order in 2005 but said she was ordered deported “in absentia” because she did not attend a hearing she was not aware of.
Barahona-Martinez crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally a second time in 2018, government documents show. Trujillo and Shmueli said she returned to the U.S. out of desperation, saying her U.S.-born son required significant medical attention. Trujillo said gang members in Honduras were also trying to recruit his wife’s son.
“This is the whole reason she’s here. To save her son,” Trujillo said.
Barahona-Martinez’s arrest is the latest detention of a spouse of a U.S. service member or veteran by ICE. Historically rare, such arrests have become more common under the second Trump administration, which has revoked prior limits on ICE arrests as part of its mass deportation campaign.
Some military spouses have been released from ICE custody after their cases garnered media attention and intervention from members of Congress, like the case of Deisy Rivera-Ortega, the wife of an active-duty Army soldier. She was detained by ICE in April and released last month, though her deportation case is still active.
Shmueli said the same outcome should occur in this case, given Barahona-Martinez’s lack of a criminal record, her marriage to a retired staff sergeant and her American son’s medical condition. He noted Barahona-Martinez has a path to becoming a green card holder, based on her marriage to a U.S. citizen.
But, to be eligible for a green card, her deportation case would have to be reopened in immigration court so her removal order is nullified. Shmueli said she has a pending request to reopen her immigration court case, and that he also plans to file an application for Parole-in-Place, a specialized program which protects certain military spouses or parents from deportation.
Trujillo said ICE is treating his wife as a hardened criminal, urging the agency to allow her to continue her immigration case outside of detention.
“My message to ICE is: I’m not asking for favors. I know a lot of military members are going through this. I am just asking [ICE] to let my wife go,” he said. “Don’t break this family apart.”
