Joshua Aviles has been working 12-hour shifts aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln for more than 250 straight days without a port call, a modern Navy record for consecutive time at sea. His reward? A phone call telling him that federal agents had grabbed his father off a Florida street.
Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, a 48-year-old handyman from Nicaragua who has lived in the United States for 19 years, was arrested by Border Patrol on Saturday during a traffic stop in Key West. He was on his way to the mechanic. He had his driver’s license, his Social Security card, and a valid work permit. His green card application was pending. His wife, Argelia, described a man who “dedicates himself only to work so he can put food on the table at home.” DHS did not dispute that he lacks a criminal record. None of that mattered. He sits in ICE custody facing deportation proceedings.
The Department of Homeland Security issued its now-ritualized statement: “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws.” The cruelty is the punctuation mark at the end. They are telling every service member with an immigrant parent or spouse: your sacrifice buys you nothing. Your uniform does not shield your family. Your deployment is an opportunity, not a burden we will lighten.
Joshua’s sister, Katherine Delgado, told CBS News that Joshua joined the military in part because he believed it would improve his father’s chances of obtaining legal status, so that his family would “no longer be living in fear of being arrested.” That is the bargain this country has historically offered: serve us, and we will see your family. The Trump administration tore up that contract. It rescinded prior limits on ICE and Border Patrol arrests and rolled back military parole-in-place, a program that allowed spouses, children, and parents of active-duty troops to pursue legal status from within the country. The Associated Press found that at least six military family members have been deported and one self-deported since this crackdown began. The government does not even track these cases.
U.S. Forest Service (source) (CC0) via rawpixelMeanwhile, the ship Joshua serves on has become a scandal in its own right. More than 200 days at sea with no port call. Reports of food shortages, deteriorating mental health, and equipment strain. Democratic lawmakers demanded answers after sailors’ families raised alarms about morale and living conditions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth waved it all off as “completely misrepresented.” Katherine Delgado spent hundreds of dollars sending care packages to her brother, some of which never arrived. She told CNN that Joshua is supposed to come home soon. “And he’s gonna come home without his father.”
Argelia Aviles said her husband was counting the days until the deployment ended. He was excited. He wanted to hug his son, whom he had not seen in nine months. Instead, Luis Manuel Aviles Roa waits in a detention cell, and his son waits on an aircraft carrier somewhere between the Middle East and home, unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to do anything for the man who raised him.
This is not a glitch. This is the system functioning exactly as designed under an administration that treats immigrant families as targets first and people never. A man with a work permit and a pending green card application is pulled over and disappears into detention. His son, pulling 12-hour shifts on a carrier that broke a record nobody wanted to break, gets the call at sea. And DHS issues a press release about “enforcing the laws passed by Congress” as though that absolves them of what they have done to this family.
Every member of Congress who votes to fund this machine owns it. Every official who signs off on these arrests owns it. And every American who believes that a man who sends his son to war deserves better than a traffic-stop kidnapping should be raising hell right now, because silence is consent and the next family on the list is already being chosen.