Marine veteran appeals to Trump after his breastfeeding Mexican wife gets deported
A retired U.S. Marine veteran is appealing to the courts and President Trump to intervene after ICE agents arrested his Mexico-born wife on a deportation order while she was meeting with officials to try to secure a green card.
Adrian Clouatre has been forced to rely on his parents to help care for his 10-week old as he holds down his job and tries to work the legal process get his wife Paola out of a detention center so they can be reunited.
Paola got arrested while seeking to resolve her own immigration status after her mother's failure to appear for an interview brought a deportation order.
Now the 26-year-old Marine vet is appealing to a California judge to close the administrative holdup – and says he may seek a pardon from President Donald Trump.
'They straight up lied to me,' Clouatre told the Daily Mail, when describing how his wife got arrested at her immigration appointment.
'I mean, for lack of a better word, they told us that we passed the interviewing, to go wait in the lobby for paper regarding our next appointment. And instead, we were met by three ICE agents. They handcuffed her, they recommended that I take her wedding ring, and they let me give her a hug and kiss goodbye,' he said.
For the time being he is trying to keep things together by holding down his job managing a restaurant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana while his parents help care for his kids. The couple also has a two year old.
He has substituted infant formula since his youngest is unable to breast feed while his wife is in detention. He visits the detention center in Monroe, Louisiana, which is about a four-hour car drive away. The facility is located in a remote rural area, and has also been used to house detained immigrant students from across the country.
'I mean, if the president saw it and pardoned it, that would be ideal,' Clouatre said. 'He has the power to pardon immigrants. He has the power to pardon a rapper with felony gun charges. I'm sure he could pardon my wife, to be blunt,' he said. 'I have not reached out to the president but I may,' he added.
'It's just not way to treat a vet for crying out loud,' his lawyer Carey Holliday told the Daily Mail.
'Honorable discharge form the Marine Corps, two small children – it's just not fair to the family,' he said.
The case has received publicity in Louisiana and now nationally. Clouatre's team has been in contact with Louisiana Sens. John Kennedy and Bill Cassidey seeking to connect them with ICE officials.
The case is just one of numerous high-profile ICE arrests at courthouses, administrative agencies, and work sites as part of Trump's 'mass deportation' campaign.
The White House is demanding 3,000 people a day.
An AP report including a separate interview with Clouatre said the administration had jettisoned policies of providing deference to military families, even as Marine Corps recruiters 'promote enlistment as protection' for families without legal status.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin responded that Paola Clouatre 'is in the country illegally' and said the Trump administration is 'not going to ignore the rule of law.'
Paola Clouatre is a 25-year old Mexican national whose brought her to the US seeking asylum when she was a minor.
It was during the process of seeking to get a green card when she and her husband learned she was subject to a 2018 deportation order, he said.
'They both showed up in 2016, and in 2018 the mother failed to appear. And my wife was homeless and had no contact with her mother, and was also a minor,' Clouatre told the Daily Mail.
Now, his lawyer is trying to get a California judge to dispense with that order so that he can appeal to the administration to resolve the situation.
Asked for his own thoughts on enforcement, Clouatre said the 'ability to use discretion should be given to the Enforcement and Removal officers at the lowest level.'
'They were very sympathetic. They didn't want to detain her,' he told Daily Mail. THey even told her that like while she was waiting to be sent to Hancock County (Mississippi),' he said.
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