The wife of a U.S. Army soldier has been released from immigration detention after a month behind bars, following direct intervention by Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). Deisy Rivera Ortega, married to Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano, was taken into custody on April 14 at an immigration office in El Paso, Texas.
Duckworth's office confirmed that the senator personally called Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin earlier this week to push for Rivera Ortega's release. She was let go late Thursday night, according to a statement from the senator.
“I am so incredibly grateful for Deisy's release and for her to be reunited with her family,” Duckworth said. “I'm thankful to Secretary Mullin for heeding my personal call to release Deisy, but she—and so many others—should never have been in this situation to begin with.”
Rivera Ortega, an El Salvador native, first entered the United States near the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, in 2016. The Department of Homeland Security noted she had been under a final removal order since December 2019. She married Serrano, an active-duty soldier with 27 years of service including a deployment to Afghanistan, in 2022.
At the time of her arrest, Rivera Ortega was in the process of applying for a program that grants temporary permission for family members of U.S. service members to remain in the country while pursuing permanent legal status, according to Duckworth's office. She had also been issued a valid five-year work permit in 2024 and was employed at two hotels on Fort Bliss, the Army base where Serrano is stationed.
Her detention came amid a shift in DHS policy. In April 2023, the department rescinded a 2022 directive that considered an immediate family member's military service a “significant mitigating factor” in immigration enforcement decisions. The current policy states that “military service alone does not automatically exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”
Serrano expressed confusion over his wife's arrest, telling CBS News last month, “I don't really understand why, because she followed the rules of immigration by the T since day one.”
DHS confirmed Rivera Ortega's release on Friday, adding that she will be monitored via a GPS tracking device and must submit to mandatory home visits and regular check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “She will receive full due process,” a DHS spokesperson said.
The case highlights ongoing tensions over immigration enforcement, particularly as Republicans push for tougher measures. A recent Senate parliamentarian ruling dealt a blow to GOP efforts to fund such enforcement, while some lawmakers have warned that the party risks midterm losses without comprehensive reform.
Duckworth's office said the senator called Serrano on Thursday afternoon to share the news of his wife's impending release—an update he had been waiting weeks for. “I don't have words to describe how happy I feel,” he told CBS News shortly after being reunited with Rivera Ortega.
