In the past, the U.S. military has publicly promoted the possibility of citizenship for service members and their families as a recruitment tool.
But now with declining numbers of service members becoming citizens plus more deportations of their family members — and as the Marines, the Navy and Coast Guard are all distancing themselves from such programs — the military-to-citizenship pipeline may be quietly fading.
Citizenship through service
The citizenship benefits and familial opportunities that military service brings have historically been factors in recruitment for the U.S. military, said John Lira, a San Antonio Marine Corps veteran and founder of Lone Star Veteranos for Democracy.
Lira said three members of his platoon were granted citizenship the day of their graduation from basic training before they eventually deployed to Iraq.
“It was a huge incentive, citizenship, but it’s a way to bring pride to their family. I joined because I wanted to elevate … the social status, the cultural capital of the family in many ways,” Lira said. “You have a son or a daughter serving. That’s tremendous pride. It lifts the entire family.”
The military has for years advertised an expedited citizenship process for service members and veterans, in addition to deportation protections for qualifying family members.
U.S. Army veteran Jay Brown, who now works for the Texas Veterans Commission, said she joined the military after watching the events of 9/11. She was awarded expedited citizenship in 2004. In total, the process took less than a year.
“It was like a weight lifted off my back,” Brown said. “I really wanted the citizenship. Growing up, my mom always wanted us three kids to not suffer the poverty in the Philippines.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data indicates that the number of expedited naturalizations of service members and veterans was steadily growing every year between 2020-2024, rising from around 4,500 per year in 2020 to 16,200 in 2024.
However, these numbers decreased slightly during the first year of the Trump administration compared to 2024. More significantly, the first half of fiscal year 2026 amounted to only 5,948 approved military naturalizations, which puts it on track for a sharp decrease compared to the 16,064 naturalizations that happened in fiscal year 2025.
Since President Donald Trump took office in 2025, the way the government has dealt with immigration cases involving service members or their families is changing.
In 2025, a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy was issued, “ICE values the contributions of all those who have served in the U.S. military; however, U.S. military service alone does not automatically exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws,” it stated.
This was a departure from a 2022 ICE policy that stated U.S. military service of a noncitizen or their immediate family members is a “significant mitigating factor” that must be considered when taking immigration enforcement action against said individuals.
There have still been many cases of veterans being deported after their service over the years, starting long before the Trump administration changes.
“Even before this, veterans they went a full term and then were being deported as veterans, sometimes collecting VA disability, having not broken any law,” Lira said. “The deportation of veterans who should have been granted their citizenship has been a problem since I went in 1999.”
Lira said what appears to be changing now is the focus on deportations of family members, as well as a delay in granting citizenship to service members.
“The fact that the military has moved to letting a full enlistment pass without remembering to grant them their citizenship is crazy to me,” Lira said. “But this is now targeting not the veteran, but their families.”
What is parole in place?
In 2007, 25-year-old Army Staff Sgt. Alex Ramon Jimenez was captured by enemy forces in Iraq. As the Army searched for him abroad, back home the Department of Homeland Security was working to deport his undocumented wife, Yaderlin Hiraldo Jimenez.
Jimenez had petitioned for a green card before her husband deployed, but while he was missing in action, the government attempted to deport her to her native Dominican Republic. The case gained national attention, and DHS allowed her to remain in the county. One year later, her husband’s remains were found.
The Jimenez case paved the way for the policy that would become known as Military Parole in Place. By 2013, USCIS had officially issued a policy memorandum outlining parole for undocumented spouses, children and parents of Armed Forces personnel and veterans.
In 2016 the policy was expanded even further, with military branches actively advertising it in their recruiting efforts. The policy is not a guarantee of citizenship, but it provides a pathway by allowing qualifying family members to remain in the country legally as they move through the process with their service member sponsor.
“Military preparedness can potentially be adversely affected if active members of the U.S. Armed Forces and individuals serving in the Selected Reserve of the Ready Reserve, who can be quickly called into active duty, worry about the immigration status of their spouses, parents and children,” the policy noted.
Whether parole in place is granted is assessed case-by-case, but the policy “weighs heavily in favor of parole in place” for family members of veterans and service members. Overstayed visas or prior applications for legal status could disqualify an individual from military parole in place, but they could still be eligible for deferred action, which is a temporary protection from deportation for family members of service members or veterans.
“Absent a criminal conviction or other serious adverse factors, parole in place would generally be an appropriate exercise of discretion for such an individual,” the memorandum said in reference to qualifying family members.
For family members applying for parole in place, wait times have nearly tripled over the last year. According to USCIS data, the processing time for military parole went from 4.5 months in fiscal year 2025 to 12.5 months in fiscal year 2026.
Effect on Texas families
When Texas native Christian Hernandez enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2020, one of the very first things he did was sponsor his mom for military parole in place.
“She’s a single mom, so that was my driving factor. I know she did a lot to come here to the country, right?” Hernandez said. “I felt like it was on me to pay her back for what she did. Because I’m glad I grew up in the United States.”
As immigration raids increased in frequency and size near his hometown of Paris, Texas, in 2018 and 2019, he grew worried for his mother. She had immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s from Mexico and raised seven kids, but she was still undocumented when he enlisted.
Once he got out of boot camp and became her sponsor for parole in place, she received a document that explained her current status in the program just in case she was stopped, Hernandez said. From there she got a work visa and then her permanent residence. She is still waiting for her citizenship.
“My mom was telling me she felt untouchable. She wasn’t scared of [deportation] anymore,” Hernandez said about when they first started the program. “Right now, she does get a little worried sometimes, but I do tell her that she has more documentation than most people have.”
Hernandez is the only person in his family to serve in the military, which has become a point of pride for his whole family, but especially his mom.
“Me being in the Marine Corps is bigger to her, I think, than it is to me,” he said. “She likes having the Marine Corps emblem stickers everywhere. She likes posting my boot camp pictures all the time. She’s very proud of that.”
As Texas, and San Antonio, have become central to the Trump administration’s deportation campaign — a March New York Times analysis ranked San Antonio fourth among U.S. cities for immigration arrests per day, with higher totals now than under the Biden administration — military families around the state are reeling from the impacts.
One San Antonio congressman said he believes the family members of service members are being specifically targeted now.
“We have seen now, time after time, that spouses, that parents of U.S. service members have been taken in by ICE and some of them deported,” said U.S. Rep Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio). “I believe that they’re targeting military families.”
Castro said that last month the mother of a U.S. Navy midshipman that he had nominated to the Naval Academy this year was detained by ICE at her green card appointment. One week later, he said Maria Rocio Rocha was deported to Mexico, splitting up the San Antonio family as her son David Garcia continues his service.
“This is somebody who had been granted parole in place and was pursuing a green card, and still knowing that, the U.S. government, ICE, decided to take her to the detention center,” Castro said. “These are people who are serving our country. Some of them in active combat zones, and yet their families are being detained by ICE, so it’s absolutely shameful.”
The San Antonio Report reached out to ICE, DHS and USCIS for comment on the military parole in place program.
In response, DHS said: “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws. Military service by an immediate relative does not automatically grant parole, lawful status, or immunity from immigration enforcement.”
Military family deportations
An Associated Press investigation last month found more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained during the second Trump administration.
In July, Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juárez, who is currently stationed at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, watched with his 6-year-old daughter as his wife, Cristy Maryori Villafranca Trejo, was detained outside of a Walmart. She was deported in August.
“How can I even focus on my military career because I have to worry about how my wife is doing?” he told the AP last month.
During the first Trump administration in 2019, several Democratic senators, afraid that military parole in place was coming to an end, wrote to DHS to plead in favor of keeping the program.
The agency responded that it was “assessing the status of remaining programs-including [parole in place].” It was ultimately continued.
DHS said that last year they arrested 125 military veterans. Of those, 34 were placed in removal proceedings and more than 150 immediate family members were arrested, the agency said in a letter to Democratic senators in February 2026.
The current policy is even a departure from the first Trump administration, said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, as more noncitizens without criminal records — including families seeking military parole in place — are being targeted for deportation.
“The departure that we’re seeing in this administration is a reneging on the commitment to support this process,” Gupta said. “…You’re not seeing that reaffirming of commitment like you saw in the first Trump administration. And so, while parole in place still exists, and there might be people here and there that are getting it, there’s no administration-wide commitment to it.”
Gupta said that as immigration arrests rise to record highs and border crossings reach record lows, those without violent criminal convictions are getting swept up in deportation efforts.
“Many immigrants being picked up are the parents of service members. In the past, these are folks who would not have been picked up because the United States government was more so prioritizing those who pose safety threats or have some kind of criminal record,” Gupta said.
Military recruiting changes
Asked last week, the Marine Corps and the Navy both said they no longer promote military parole in place.
“It is not a Department of War or Marine Corps program, benefit, or enlistment incentive. It is not being advertised by the Marine Corps,” a spokesperson for the branch confirmed to the San Antonio Report.
A U.S. Navy spokesperson gave the same response.
Reporting from the military-focused news outlet the War Horse indicates that the Coast Guard no longer touts enlistment as a way to protect immigrant family members.
However, the Army still advertises the program, as do National Guard recruiters, a spokesperson at the National Guard Bureau confirmed.
“While not a U.S. Army program, recruiters may highlight that active-duty service in the U.S. Armed Forces permits a service member to apply for Parole in Place on behalf of qualified family members,” U.S. Army Spokeswoman Heather J. Hagan said.
Congressional Democrats have launched an investigation into the increase of deportations of service members and their families, questioning why immigration protections are still being promoted, and if DHS has partnered with the Pentagon to target military families.
But Democrats aren’t the only ones who have historically supported deportation protections for military families.
Earlier this year, U.S. Rep Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) held a press conference in support of the release of the wife of an Iraq and Afghanistan war, and Texas National Guard veteran. Retired Staff Sgt. Wilmer Trujillo’s wife was detained at an immigration check-in appointment in Dallas this June.
Further, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020, signed into law by Trump and a Republican-led U.S. Senate, contained a provision supporting military parole in place.
“Disruption to military family unity should be minimized in order to enhance military readiness; and the importance of the parole in place authority of the Secretary of Homeland Security is reaffirmed,” the act read.
‘Devastating’ impacts
State Rep. Josey Garcia (D-San Antonio), an Air Force veteran who was the first woman veteran to serve in the State Legislature, said she is concerned by recent trends and the impact they are having on San Antonio’s large military community.
She said just last week she had two constituents contact her office, a 100% disabled veteran whose father had been detained and Vietnam War veteran who had left Mexico to come to the U.S. as a young child.
“This man served his country in Vietnam, one of the most difficult wars of our modern history, and now he’s terrified to ask for assistance, to go to the VA hospital, to call his congressman,” Garcia said.
Garcia said deporting veterans and their family members is not the way she believes the U.S. immigration process should function, and she plans to address it next session in the Texas Legislature, ideally with help from her colleagues across the aisle.
“Patriotism is nonpartisan. Patriotism is red, white and blue,” she said. “I would love to see our administration get back to protecting our veterans and our families, and making sure that those who are sacrificing for our country are also being looked out for and protected.”
For 21-year-old Texas Army Sgt. Alexis Jones Reyes, the recent detention of her father, Alberto Contreras Reyes, has been distressing. Her mom, Michelle Jones, said the citizenship benefits were part of the reason she joined the military.
“She was thinking she could help sponsor her dad,” Jones said. “She was never a really big military person…she was our bougie little girl. She had heard from somebody that if she was in the military, that might help her dad get legal status.”
The family had hired immigration lawyers and were moving through the citizenship process for Contreras Reyes, when he was involved in a dispute at work that led to an arrest earlier this year, Jones said.
The charges in the case were dropped, and Contreras Reyes was never convicted of any criminal offenses, but because of his immigration status he was sent to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas.
At the time of his detention, Jones Reyes was deployed to Estonia, near the Russian border. She said her dad’s guidance was one of the reasons she decided to serve in the U.S. military.
“His detention has been extremely difficult for me and for our family. The possibility that he could be deported is devastating. After spending years separated by international borders, I believed we had finally reached a point where my father could remain close to his family. The thought of losing that opportunity is heartbreaking,” Jones Reyes said in a letter.
Now back in Texas, she has used her weekends to drive six hours in total to visit him in detention, while she remains in active duty at Fort Hood, intending to serve 20 years, her mom said.
“I wanted him to be present for future milestones, family gatherings, holidays, and the everyday moments that families often take for granted,” Jones Reyes said. “… He is an important part of our support system, and his absence has left a tremendous emotional void.”
The San Antonio Report’s military and veterans coverage is supported by Report for America.
