'When is my mom coming back home?': Wife of active-duty US Army soldier deported to Honduras after ICE detention in front of daughter following Walmart trip

The wife of an active-duty U.S. Army sergeant has been deported to Honduras after ICE detained her following a family trip to Walmart in Texas. Her husband is now taking care for their 6-year-old daughter while continuing his military duties. The deportation comes as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown increasingly affects spouses and parents of active-duty service members.

Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo was detained July 11 outside a Walmart near Fort Bliss, where her husband, Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, is stationed, according to a report in news agency AP.

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Villafranca-Trejo detained in front of her daughter

Their daughter was present when immigration agents detained Villafranca-Trejo. The child started school this year without Villafranca Trejo.

“She asks me every day, ‘When is my mom coming back home?’ and I don’t have an answer to that,” Turcios said. “It’s just heartbreaking for me, just looking at her and not being able to give her an answer when her mom is coming back to our family.”

Villafranca-Trejo was deported Monday to her native Honduras, according to her family and the Department of Homeland Security. She is at least the seventh spouse or parent of an active-duty U.S. military service member deported under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to an Associated Press tally.

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Army sergeant struggled after wife was detained

Since his wife’s detention, Turcios Juarez has been trying to balance his responsibilities as an Army sergeant with raising their young daughter. Instead of attending morning training, he takes his daughter to first grade. He also said he had to postpone a planned assignment at another base.

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“I don’t know if I will be able to continue with this,” Turcios Juarez told AP, talking about his Army career. “I have to make a plan to make sure I can still fulfill my military responsibilities but also take care of my family.”

The couple had been legally married since 2022. Villafranca-Trejo was listed as a dependent in the Army’s personnel system and was included on Turcios Juarez’s upcoming orders to move to Oklahoma, the AP report stated.

Wife had no known criminal record

Villafranca-Trejo entered the United States in 2016 at age 18 and had no known criminal record, according to AP. She was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2017 after failing to appear at a hearing, according to DHS.

However, her husband said she had not received notice of the hearing and did not know she had been ordered deported. The couple discovered the removal order after they married in 2022 and began working on her green card.

Turcios Juarez, who is originally from Honduras, became a US citizen in 2024 after enlisting two years earlier.

Family tried to resolve her immigration case

Villafranca-Trejo’s motion to reopen her case was denied in May, while an appeal before the Board of Immigration Appeals remained pending, according to her attorney.

She had also been waiting for about a year for a decision on an application for military parole-in-place. The program allows certain immediate family members of US troops to remain in the country while applying for a green card. Turcios Juarez said the family had been trying to follow the legal process to resolve the situation.

“We were following the rules, we did everything we could on our side to fix this problem,” Turcios Juarez told the AP.

DHS confirmed Villafranca-Trejo’s deportation and said she had “received due process.”

The Associated Press has found more than 50 cases in which immediate family members of U.S. troops were placed in federal immigration detention after the Trump administration rolled back protections for military families. In some cases, DHS released military spouses following media attention and intervention from members of Congress.

Congress opens inquiry into Army wife’s case

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat representing El Paso, opened a congressional inquiry into Villafranca-Trejo’s case. Her spokesperson, JP Caballero, said Escobar also visited Villafranca-Trejo at the Camp East Montana detention facility earlier this month.

Escobar expressed concern about the impact on the military family.

“My heart breaks for her, her children and the soldier who must feel so betrayed by the country he is sacrificing for,” Escobar told AP in a statement. “There are far too many families like theirs who are being targeted instead of supported.”

Soldier says he still wants to serve

Turcios Juarez has said he does not know how he will care for his daughter without his wife. He also has not figured out how to explain the deportation to his daughter. Despite the situation, he said he wants to remain in the Army.

“I love what I do, I want to keep doing this,” he said of the Army. “I just don’t know how I am going to keep doing this.”

The case has become another example of how the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement is affecting military families, particularly those with unresolved immigration cases.