Military Families & Immigration Policy: Protecting Those Who Serve
Like America as a whole, the military community is a melting pot. Patriots across America volunteer to serve from all corners of the country, every walk of life, and even from other countries too. In 2024 alone, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalized more than 16,290 service members coming from the Philippines, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, and Ghana, and more. They join the ranks of over 700,000 foreign-born military veterans who have proudly served the country they call home.
Military families reflect that same diversity and can include foreign-born military spouses, many pursuing legal paths to citizenship, and still others undocumented. Regardless of citizenship status, these are the families that move every 2-3 years when their service members get orders, establish their families in new cities, states, and countries, and keep the Homefront strong so their service members can stay mission-focused and ready.
Their service and sacrifice should be honored.
Until recently, DHS policy considered veteran or military family status as a mitigating factor when making determinations about deportation. That policy was reversed in April, 2025, with the Administration stating that “military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”
For months, we’ve heard from military families swept up in immigration proceedings – an Active Duty family in Texas legally here with a service member improperly detained by ICE; a Vietnam-era veteran deported to Spain, where he’d only lived as a baby before his parents moved to America in search of a better life, only to be rejected by Spain – since he was never a Spanish citizen either – now in an ICE facility in Northeast Ohio; families across the country afraid to go on base to get groceries or pick up prescriptions, worried that they might be targeted by ICE and deported.
Perhaps no case illustrates this better than that of Annie Ramos, a new military spouse with no criminal record who was detained when she and her husband, an Army staff sergeant, applied for her military ID card.
But targeting military families threatens both readiness and recruiting. How can Annie Ramos’ husband focus on his upcoming deployment when his wife is threatened with deportation? How safe will prospective Marines feel about joining the Corps if their families are at risk simply by attending their graduations?
No one is arguing that military families are above the law, but the practice of that law has always operated with deference to the service, sacrifice, and patriotism of the families that volunteer to serve for this nation — a nation many of them came to in pursuit of a better life.
We appreciate that the Administration has prioritized military family quality of life, with investments in military spouse employment, childcare, and increased compensation for service members. They deserve our thanks, support, and the earned benefits of service – regardless of where they were born.
We call on the Trump Administration to revert to long-held, common-sense DHS policy that prized the families who protect us all.
