The wife of a new Army recruit went to a Texas Navy base to pick up military ID cards for her family – but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting for her.
Giovanna Perez, 35, drove her four children from their home in Weslaco, Texas, to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi on Sept. 21 for a scheduled appointment to pick up ID cards that would give her family access to military health insurance, medical facilities and commissary stores, reported The Atlantic.
Her husband, Pedro Gutierrez, had left a month earlier for basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia.
Perez’s parents brought her across the border from Mexico illegally when she was 6. Gutierrez is a U.S. citizen, and he had already applied on her behalf for Parole in Place, a program that offers close relatives of service members a path to legal residency. Perez said officials at Fort Benning told her husband she would have no trouble getting the IDs.
At the gate, guards said they had no record of her appointment. Two military officials then took the family into a room for questioning. Perez said one officer seemed to be texting her answers to someone. Then two men wearing ICE patches walked in.
Perez said they appeared to know about the Parole in Place application and ordered her to report to an ICE office in Harlingen, Texas. When she went there three days later, she was booked and ordered to appear in immigration court.
“My kids were just, like, What’s going on?” Perez told The Atlantic. “Are they gonna detain you? Why are they doing this to us? I thought you were supposed to be safe.”
ICE confirmed to The Atlantic that Navy personnel reported Perez to immigration officers when she arrived. “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” the agency said in a statement.
Perez’s attorney, Alex Martinez, said he suspects the government is using Parole in Place to gather information for immigration enforcement.
“There’s no bigger betrayal to our soldiers than to use their trust in a program, set out by our government to protect their families, and ultimately use it to destroy their families while they’re serving our country and putting their lives on the line,” Martinez said. “You’re stabbing your own soldiers in the back.”
A defense official told the outlet there have been “varying degrees of cooperation between military installations and the Department of Homeland Security” for more than a year. The Navy declined to comment. The Army and the Office of the Secretary of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
Gutierrez graduates from basic training on Nov. 5. Perez plans to drive to Georgia with their children for the ceremony. Five days later, she is due back in court in Texas.
“I have no one,” she said. “I’m by myself.”