A U.S. Army combat veteran is fighting to keep ICE from breaking up his Princeton family. Arelys Barahona-Martinez, the wife of retired Staff Sgt. Wilmer Trujillo, has been detained and faces deportation to her native Honduras.
Their attorney said Barahona-Martinez, 40, was detained Wednesday, June 10, after going to Dallas for an appointment with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
She was being held at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, said immigration lawyer Mark Shmueli.
He said an order of removal was issued “in absentia” to Barahona-Martinez in November 2005 after she entered the U.S. illegally.
“She never got notice of the court hearing because the order did not have a date, a time or an address,” Shmueli said, adding that she does not have a criminal record.
Barahona-Martinez gave birth to a son in Dallas County and returned with him to Honduras in 2006, the attorney said. But she came back to the U.S. in 2018 to seek medical treatment for her son, who suffers from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes tumors to grow in the nervous system, Shmueli said.
She met Trujillo in the Dallas area and records show the couple married in Denton County October 2020.
“USCIS has recognized the marriage, which makes her eligible to apply for a Green Card,” Shmueli said. However, he said she cannot apply for permanent residence while under the deportation order.
The couple lives in Princeton with her son, now 20, and Trujillo’s two daughters from a previous marriage.
“She’s his rock, they’re very close and he would be devastated” if she were deported, the attorney said.
Trujillo, 45, enlisted in the Army after high school and served several years before joining the National Guard, where he was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan before retiring in 2021.
Shmueli said he had filed an immigration court motion in San Antonio to reopen her case and rescind the removal order because she was never given proper notice of the 2005 court hearing since it did not contain her address.
“That motion carries an automatic stay of removal,” he said.
An immigration judge could then rule that the 2005 order never happened and Barahona-Martinez could continue her application for a Green Card, Shmueli said.
The attorney also filed a request with ICE for Barahona-Martinez to be granted Parole in Place (PIP), a discretionary program allowing noncitizens already in the U.S. to remain here while their case is considered.
Shmueli said a 2010 order by President Obama specified PIP would be applied favorably in military cases involving active duty and retired servicemembers.
“I don’t want to hate on ICE. I don’t want to hate on anybody; but yeah, it boggles me,” Trujillo said in a June 12 interview with CBS News. “It rips my heart apart.”