Three plainclothes officers claiming to be from the Department of Public Safety deceived and deported Shirly Guardado, the undocumented wife of Army Sgt. Ayssac Correa, fracturing their family and casting doubt on his future in military service.
On March 13, Guardado dropped off her 10-month-old son with her mother and went to work at an air conditioning manufacturing company. That same morning, her husband, Correa, reported for duty with the 103rd Quartermaster Company outside of Houston. Guardado reportedly got a call from "some sort of public safety officer," informing her that her car had been in an accident in the work parking lot, according to Mother Jones. The men, who claimed to be Department of Public Safety officers apprehended her as she went out to inspect her vehicle.
Shortly afterward, Guardado's sister told Correa that undercover ICE agents had taken his wife and refused to say where they were taking her.
Correa told The War Horse, according to Mother Jones, he hadn't feared his wife's deportation, believing his active-duty status and her ongoing efforts to obtain U.S. citizenship would protect her.
"Me being in the military—I felt bad that it was happening, because I'm also married to somebody who's going through the [immigration] process. But I was like, 'Oh, there's no way this is going to happen to us,'" Correa said.
Guardado had a work permit and an ICE order of supervision requiring regular check-ins after crossing the border 10 years earlier, and she and her husband had a military parole-in-place request pending with the agency for over a year, but none of it mattered.
"I didn't hear from her for like three days," Correa told Mother Jones. When his wife was finally able to contact him from an ICE facility in Conroe, Texas, he told her there had to have been a mistake.
"They're gonna realize you got your stuff in order, and they're gonna let you go," Correa assured Guardado.
"I kept thinking, 'Oh, she's gonna get out tomorrow. She's gonna get out tomorrow.' And then that turned into almost three months," Correa revealed.
Guardado was deported to Honduras on May 30, her 28th birthday, and forced to leave behind her young son, Kylian. Since then, she has been staying at different hotels since she has no family in the country after immigrating to the U.S. more than a decade ago.
Correa plans to fly to Honduras to reunite his son with his mother and has requested a transfer to Soto Cano Air Base. Although he hopes to continue his Army service, which began in 2018, he won't re-enlist when his contract ends next year unless the transfer is approved.
Originally published on Latin Times
