Since immigration agents detained his wife in New Orleans last month, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran has ferried the couple's 9-week-old daughter to a north Louisiana detention facility so she can nurse and visit her mother while the family waits to learn if she will be deported.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Paola Clouatre, of Baton Rouge, after a U.S. Customs and Immigration Services check-in last month that she attended with her husband in New Orleans, according to the family's attorney.
The case highlights how the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is increasingly being driven by arrests at immigration check-ins and court hearings. Officials historically shied away from such operations over concerns they could deter migrants from participating in the court process.
Clouatre, 25, entered the United States from Mexico with her mother when she was 14, said Carey Holliday, an attorney and former immigration judge who represents the family. Holliday said Clouatre's mother had applied for asylum upon her arrival with her daughter from Mexico. But she failed to arrive for a 2018 trial on the asylum claim, prompting a judge to issue a deportation order for Clouatre as well as her mother.
Clouatre and her husband, Adrian Clouatre, learned of the deportation order a few days before she was summoned to the USCIS appointment in New Orleans on May 27, Holliday said.
Holliday said the couple was open during the appointment about Paola Clouatre's immigration status and their attempts to secure her a green card. Afterward, he said, ICE agents arrived and detained Clouatre.
She remains in custody at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe as the family awaits a judge's ruling on a request to halt her deportation.
Holliday said he has not been granted access to the woman's court records and that the family has struggled to gather information from immigration officials. An ICE spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
Trump has pressured federal officials to speed up deportations, leading ICE officials and Department of Homeland Security prosecutors to begin coordinating raids outside of courtrooms, according to a report by The New York Times. That trend follows an earlier executive order directing federal agencies, such as the customs office the Clouatres visited, to coordinate with ICE.
Trump has also lifted guardrails that previously barred immigration agents from making arrests inside schools, municipal courts and churches.
Clouatre is not the first person since Trump's term began to be detained in New Orleans at a customs appointment. ICE agents in April arrested Pedro Alejandro Lujan-Martinez, a Honduran man who went with his U.S. citizen wife to a citizenship appointment they had made under a program advertised for undocumented partners of U.S. citizens.
Lujan-Martinez was later charged in federal court with a felony for illegally reentering the country, part of a push by the Trump Justice Department to further penalize illegal immigration.
ICE agents in May also detained three migrants at a municipal court in Jefferson Parish.
Last week, advocates in downtown New Orleans protested the arrest of a Central American man who they said was detained in late May following a hearing at New Orleans' immigration court.
"Immigration court has become a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don't’ situation,” said Brittnie Grasmick, a New Orleans-based activist.
The Clouatres met in California while Adrian, a Louisiana native, was serving there in the Marine Corps. They recently moved back to Baton Rouge, where Adrian Clouatre manages a local restaurant.
The couple has two children -- a one-year-old boy and the nine-week-old girl.
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