Luis Manuel Avilés Roa, a Nicaraguan immigrant whose son serves aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, has been arrested by US Border Patrol agents and is being held at a federal detention center as he awaits deportation, according to his son.
The arrest was disclosed by Joshua Avilés, a sailor on the aircraft carrier, in a Facebook post. A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Sunday that Avilés Roa was detained following a traffic stop by border patrol officers in Key West, Florida.
Son learned of arrest while deployed at sea
In his Facebook post, Joshua Avilés wrote that he had spent more than nine months at sea in the Middle East aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, fighting for a country that had given him everything. He said he received a phone call informing him that his father had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE.
He said his father held a valid driver's license, a social security number and a work permit. He said the family had done everything required through immigration services to have his father's green card approved and had simply been waiting for the process to conclude.
Joshua Avilés said the news had broken his heart. He said he did not know how he would manage to keep working twelve or more hours a day knowing his father was being held somewhere and was probably being treated like a criminal.
DHS says father entered the country illegally
The Department of Homeland Security said Avilés Roa had entered the United States illegally and would remain in ICE detention until the deportation process was completed. The department said in a statement that having a family member serve in the military did not give a person a free pass to violate the country's laws.
Background: the carrier and the immigration debate
The USS Abraham Lincoln is a US Navy aircraft carrier that had been deployed in the Middle East for months amid the war involving Iran. ICE is the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration law and carrying out deportations inside the United States.
President Donald Trump maintains that his administration's crackdown on illegal immigration is intended to make the United States safer.
Human rights organizations, however, say enforcement operations targeting immigrants violate their rights and create an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities. Some of these groups have raised concerns that people are being targeted by security services based on their ethnic characteristics.
