More than 50 husbands, wives, mothers and fathers of active-duty U.S. troops have been pulled into immigration detention since President Trump's second term began, according to an Associated Press investigation published this week. Six of those relatives have already been deported, a seventh left the country voluntarily, and at least eight remained in custody as of publication.
Reporters built the count by combing through thousands of federal court filings gathered by the Habeas Dockets project, cross-checking existing news coverage, and independently confirming details with the families and lawyers involved — a process AP itself describes as producing a floor, not a ceiling, since the government keeps no dedicated tally of these cases. For decades, close relatives of service members were treated as effectively off-limits for deportation enforcement under an informal, bipartisan understanding. That understanding has now visibly cracked.
