Mexican national married to a Marine Corps veteran seeks release from immigration custody

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A woman detained at a citizenship appointment in May will not be deported following a judge’s ruling this week barring her removal, but her Marine Corps veteran husband said she remains in custody at immigration detention center in Louisiana.

For two months, Paola Clouatre, 25, has been held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement complex in Monroe, waiting to learn whether she will be allowed to remain in the country. Once a week she is allowed to see her husband, who makes the eight-hour roundtrip trek from Baton Rouge so the mother can breastfeed their 4-month-old baby and see their 2-year-old son.

Clouatre, a Mexican national, entered the U.S. seeking asylum with her mother more than a decade ago. After marrying her husband in 2024 and applying for her green card to legally live and work in the U.S., she learned that ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.

In May, during a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services appointment in New Orleans, a staffer asked about the deportation order. Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, with her husband telling The Associated Press that he and his wife were trying “to do the right thing.” Soon after, officers arrived and handcuffed Clouatre.

Adrian Clouatre has spent nearly eight weeks fighting for his wife’s release, remaining optimistic that their family would soon be reunited outside the detention facility located nearly 180 miles (290 kilometers) from their south Louisiana home.

On Wednesday, they got word that a judge in California — the original jurisdiction for Paola Clouatre’s case — had stayed the order for her removal.

Adrian Clouatre welcomed the decision. He said their lawyer is preparing paperwork seeking his wife’s release, though it’s not guaranteed and could take weeks even in the best of scenarios.

“I just keep telling our son, “‘Mom’s coming home soon,’” Adrian Clouatre said.

Meanwhile, the couple’s lawyer is working to get the Baton Rouge mother’s green card process back on track, The New Orleans Advocate/The Times-Picayune reported. While the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has already ruled that the couple has a valid marriage, the process has been held up amid the legal battle.

The Baton Rouge mother is one of tens of thousands of people in custody as part of President Donald Trump’s pledge to remove millions of people who are in the country without legal permission.

Clouatre said GOP U.S. Sen. John Kennedy has also requested that the Department of Homeland Security release his wife from custody. Kennedy’s office did not return AP’s emailed request for comment.

Kennedy is not the first Louisiana Republican to get involved in an immigration case in the reliably red state. Earlier this month, An Iranian mother, who was detained by ICE after living in the U.S. for nearly five decades, was released following advocacy from Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.