BATON ROUGE, La. — Awife of a Marine Corps veteran and mother of twowas released from ICE custody on Monday after being detained in May during what she says she thought was a routine immigration office visit, she and her husband tell CBS News. "I feel like a mom again, because well, I was, at some points, I was feeling guilty, like I failed my kids, because I was, you know, without them," Paola Clouatre, 25, said in a phone interview Thursday. Asked how she feels being reunited with her husband and children, she said, "It feels good — good to be back with my family and my babies." She had just given birth to their second child and was still breastfeeding when she was detained on May 27. She was taken to an ICE detention facility in northern Louisiana, about four hours away from their Baton Rouge home. Her husband, Adrian Clouatre, would drive eight hours round-trip each week to visit with their infant daughter and 2-year-old son. "It was very difficult," Paola said. "They gave me a pump so I could pump milk and continue producing milk for when the baby came to be able to give it to her." Adrian Clouatre, 26, served in the Marine Corps for five years as an intelligence analyst. He said his wife was put in handcuffs in the lobby of an immigration enforcement field office in New Orleans after wrapping up a meeting with a staffer from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about her green card application. "I was furious," he said in an interview with CBS News in June about the arrest. "I felt betrayed. They told us we passed the interview. ... They knew I was a veteran, they knew that my wife was breastfeeding our 9-week-old daughter, they knew we had two kids. ... I cried the whole way to my car after I left the building." Asked about the conditions she experienced during her time inside the detention facility, Paola said, "It's difficult to be there, because they have a lot of rules. They are very strict. So it's very, very, hard to be there." But this week, Adrian said he finally got the call he'd been hoping for — his wife said she was going to be released, and he needed to make the drive one last time to pick her up. "She called me from a CPO [officer's] phone, like one of the ICE agent's phones," he said. Paola said she didn't meet anyone else detained inside the facility who had a military family member or who was still breastfeeding. The couple met when he was still in the service in California, and they married in 2024. Adrian says his wife now wears a monitor on her ankle, as part of her condition of release on a recognizance bond, and has to check in every two weeks with an ICE parole officer. The couple had one such appointment Thursday morning. "It was good to meet him today in the morning," Paola said about meeting with the parole officer assigned to her case. "He is a nice person." Paola says she and her mother came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was a child, but her mother abandoned her when she was still a teenager, leaving Paola homeless. She said she hadn't spoken to her mother in years. It wasn't until this spring that she learned her mother had skipped a 2018 immigration hearing, and she says she had "no idea" the federal government had issued a deportation order against both of them as a result. "There was no way for her to know about the removal order," Adrian said. Adrian said they thought they were going through the proper channels to obtain a green card for Paola after their marriage, and the process had previously gone smoothly. Instead, Paola became one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as theTrump administration pushesfor immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day. As of June 27,arrests by ICEduring President Trump's second term had reached 109,000 — an increase of about 120% from the same time period in 2024 under President Biden — according to a CBS News analysis of government data. The majority of those arrests took place in border and Southern states, figures show. The couple's attorney, Carrey Holliday, a former immigration judge, said Paola's detention was unreasonable. "There are lots of reasons why this shouldn't have happened. No. 1, Adrian, her husband, is a marine veteran, discharged honorably. She's the mother of two small children, and was nursing one," Holliday said. "She really didn't know that she had an order of removal outstanding until about a week before she had an interview for a green card. They were trying to do things legally; they just didn't get the right advice." Holliday said Paola's case is an example of the new administration's "hyper-enforcement environment." "We're in a hyper-enforcement environment right now, and all the laws are being enforced without any real consideration for the individuals involved," Holliday said. "DHS is taking some positions that... they've never taken before, especially on bond... DHS has now decided that everybody who comes across illegally can be considered an arriving alien. That has never been the definition, and it's quite a bad legal argument to make, but that's what they're making, nonetheless, and some immigration judges are buying it." Holliday said Paola no longer has a final order for removal, but she still has a long road of immigration court proceedings ahead to obtain a green card. Once some jurisdictional matters are resolved, they will seek to obtain a status called "parole in place," which helps immediate family members of military service members have a more streamlined path to obtaining a green card. On June 9, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Servicespostedon social media about the case, writing that when Paola Clouatre "was apprehended by @CBP and ordered removed by a judge in 2018, she chose to defy the order and stay in the U.S. 7 years later, she had another bad idea and applied for a Green Card. @ICEgov took her into custody at our New Orleans office. @DHSgov has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again." New federal priorities to detain immigrants with pending deportation orders are taking higher precedence than the deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. According to federal memos, the Trump administration has madeany non-citizenswith pending deportation orders a priority for arrests. CBS News reached out to ICE for a comment for this story, but has not yet received a response. During his wife's months in detention, Adrian sent letters to elected officials pleading for their help — even two letters to President Trump. He says it was office staff of Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy that stepped up and advocated for his wife's case. CBS News has reached out to Kennedy's office for comment, but has not received a response. "I'm ecstatic, I'm extremely grateful to my lawyer, to John Kennedy's office, and the community for all the support," Adrian said. Paola echoed those feelings of appreciation. "I feel happy, grateful," she said. "Thankful for the senator (staff) spending time with my husband. Thank you to the community." Black swimmers teach others amid history of aquatic segregation Lawyer says political pressure helped Marine Corps veteran, wife reunite after her ICE detention Katie Ledecky breaks her own record in women's swimming
