Luis Manuel Aviles was arrested by the Border Patrol during a traffic stop in Key West, Florida, on Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed. He is from Nicaragua, has lived in the United States for about twenty years, and was on his way to a mechanic. His son Joshua is a sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which at the time was somewhere between the Middle East and the American west coast.
DHS said Aviles entered the country illegally at a date and place it did not specify and would stay in ICE custody while removal proceedings run. Asked about the family's account, the department did not dispute that he has no criminal record, and answered with policy: "We are simply enforcing the laws passed by Congress. This Administration does not pick and choose which laws to enforce." And: having a relative in the military "is not a free pass to violate our nation's laws". Military service by an immediate relative, it added, does not automatically grant parole, lawful status or immunity from enforcement.
The family's account of his status is where the two reports differ. Katty Delgado, described by NBC News as Aviles's stepdaughter and by CBS News as Joshua's half-sister, told both outlets he was picked up near a supermarket on his way to the mechanic and that he has been in the country roughly two decades. NBC reports her saying she knows of no arrest history; CBS reports her saying he has an immigration application pending to obtain legal status. The son's Facebook post said his father has a work permit, a Social Security card and a driver's licence. Asked about that, DHS told Telemundo that work authorisation or a pending application do not confer legal status.
Joshua Aviles wrote that he had been deployed more than nine months at sea in the Middle East "fighting for a country that has given me everything", and that he did not know how he could keep working twelve-hour days knowing where his father might be. He told NBC News he has limited internet access.
The ship itself is part of why this landed where it did. The Lincoln left San Diego on 25 November and, having last called at a port in December, broke the Navy's record for time at sea without one. Relatives of the roughly five thousand crew have described deteriorating conditions and morale; the defence secretary has said those claims were completely misrepresented. The Navy said on Saturday the carrier had left the Middle East for the west coast, a passage that could take a month or more.
Aviles is not an isolated case. According to an Associated Press investigation cited by NBC News, immigration authorities have detained more than fifty parents and spouses of service members during this administration. Programmes exist that can shield immediate family of service members from deportation, but the citizenship agency describes those options as discretionary and decided case by case. Whether Aviles was in any of them was not established.
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The two accounts were built from the same three inputs — the son's Facebook post, one relative's interview, and a DHS statement — and they diverge on the one thing the department's statement does not settle. NBC's version of the family is that they know of no criminal record. CBS's is that an application for legal status is pending. Both then print the same official sentence, which answers neither.
확인: NBC News · CBS News