Every time 2-year-old Noah asks about his mom, Adrian Clouatre can only reply: “Mommy will be back soon.” The little one nods with a smile, though his father sees his sadness and tries to be strong – for both Noah and his 3-month-old sister, Lyn, whom his wife was breastfeeding until ICE detained her in May.

Clouatre, a 26-year-old who qualifies as a service-disabled US Marine Corps veteran, described how his family’s life was turned upside down when his wife, Paola, went in for a status hearing May 27. They had hoped she could move forward with her green card process, but it turned into a nightmare for the young family.

Paola, now 25, was born in Mexico and arrived in the United States in 2014 with her mother. She didn’t speak English and didn’t understand much of what was happening, her husband recounts today.

Her mother submitted an asylum application. But mother and daughter did not get along, and soon Paola ended up alone. She spent the rest of her teenage years in homeless shelters.

In 2022, Adrian met Paola at a club in Palm Springs, California, during his last year in the military. “We officially started dating a month later. Then we had our first child, Noah, and got married in February 2024,” he says.

They moved to Louisiana and began the green card process for Paola. A year later, Lyn was born.

They thought everything would go well, but Paola and her mother had lost contact after arriving in the United States. That’s why the Clouatres didn’t know there was a deportation order against her until a week before the status hearing that ended in her detention. That order was issued because Paola did not attend an immigration hearing; the notification, apparently, had been sent to her mother, who never told her.

The beginning of the nightmare

“We went to a status adjustment interview where they verified that our marriage was real and, you know, said everything was fine,” Adrian says. The interview, on the surface, seemed to have gone well.

“We found out about the deportation order about a week before the appointment and tried to reschedule, but USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) said no, so we went anyway,” Clouatre explains.

“We were honest about the deportation order,” he says. “At that moment, the interviewer went to tell their supervisor and came back and finished the interview. Said we had passed and to wait in the lobby for paperwork about our next appointment.”

Relieved, the Clouatres waited about 20 minutes in a waiting room. Their children were with Adrian’s parents. They had plans to go together to New Orleans after the hearing, to visit the French Quarter. But their plans were abruptly cut off when three ICE agents appeared and arrested Paola.

“We were confident that, since we were married and I was a veteran, they would at least allow us to resolve the deportation order and not detain her,” Adrian says. “We knew the deportation order would probably cause a problem, but we didn’t find out about it until a week before and USCIS refused to let us reschedule, so we had no other choice but to go. … My wife told the truth.”

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, responded to a CNN inquiry about the case by saying an immigration judge issued a final order of removal in February 2018. Paola is in the country illegally, McLaughlin said, and President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “are not going to ignore the rule of law.”

“On May 27, 2025, (Paola) filed emergency motion to reopen her immigration case. We await a decision on this motion,” McLaughlin said via email.

“Illegal aliens can take control of their departure with the CBP Home App,” she added. “The United States is offering aliens illegal aliens $1,000 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live (the) American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.”

The Clouatres had been watching the development of the Trump administration’s tough immigration policies, Adrian says, but they didn’t think it would affect them so closely.

“When they said they were going to focus on criminals, we thought it would just be that,” says Adrian. “But there are people like my wife, whom their parents brought and they haven’t committed crimes, and after all that … are they supposed to be punished?”

Paola was breastfeeding her daughter until she was detained. That’s why her husband – in addition to trying to juggle his work at a restaurant, caring for the children and making the four-hour drive twice a week to the ICE detention center where his wife is being held – dedicated himself tirelessly to insisting the facility allow her to use a breast pump.

“I must have been the most annoying husband, but I did it. Now she can pump milk, but she has to throw it away every time. And I try to bring the baby as often as I can so she can breastfeed and continue producing milk,” he says.

Adrian, who served as an intelligence specialist in the Marines between 2017 and 2022, says the challenges he faced then help him endure the nightmare his family is experiencing now: “I’m used to being in situations I don’t want to be in, and having to fight for it.”

But he’s worried about how it’s affecting his wife, who’s being held at the Richwood Correctional Center near Monroe, Louisiana.

She’s trying to stay strong,” Adrian says. “She knows that, you know, the lawyer and I are fighting for her every day. But, well, at the end of the day … it’s a room with a hundred more people. It’s never quiet. They just turn off the lights and they can barely sleep three hours straight.”

He adds, “That’s wearing her down now. Her mental state is worsening. She started talking to a therapist there, who is helping her.”

CNN asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement about Paola’s detention conditions but did not receive a response.

Carey Holliday, the couple’s lawyer and a former immigration judge, says they filed a motion for an immigration judge based in California to reopen Paola’s deportation order case and are awaiting a response.

“The best thing is to go to the judge who issued the deportation order and explain that the notice was not served to Paola, that she didn’t know about the appointment, and to reopen the process,” Holliday says. “And then we can close it administratively or get the prosecution to dismiss it so she can proceed to adjust her status.”

Meanwhile, Adrian continues his struggle. Amid all the paperwork and procedures, he also sent a letter to the White House, in which he begs Trump to pardon his wife and allow her to apply for a green card. His wife, he says, “has been inhumanely torn from her two small American children and her husband, an American veteran.”

The White House declined to comment about Adrian’s letter.

“I desperately miss my wife,” Adrian wrote in the letter. “She is my best friend and the love of my life. I am begging you, President Trump, to reunite my family out of respect for our (nation’s) veterans and compassion for an American family torn apart by this merciless deportation system.” (CNN, but headline rejigged)