Street signs mark Fort Bliss Family Homes as a gated community of military housing at the edge of the sprawling Army base in El Paso, Texas.
So, the ICE agents almost certainly knew they were following a military family as they trailed Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juárez, his wife, and 6-year-old daughter from their home on the base to a nearby Walmart on July 11.
But since President Trump did away with decades-old immigration protections for family members of service members upon his return to the White House, the ICE agents apparently thought nothing of lying in wait on a military base to pounce on the family of an Army sergeant.
On the way to the store, Turcios chanced to see a white F-150 pickup truck behind them. He saw it again in the parking lot after they had finished shopping and were starting back home. He figured it belonged to a fellow soldier.
Then he heard a siren. ICE had deported at least six spouses or parents of active duty U.S military service members in Trump’s second term. The agents were about to make it seven.
“They pulled me over,” the 28-year-old soldier later told the Daily Beast. “I thought it was a traffic stop.”
The pickup and at least two other unmarked ICE vehicles closed in around Turcios’ car, which had his well-worn patrol cap on the dashboard, signaling that he is an active duty soldier. Masked ICE agents nonetheless shouted orders and rapped loudly on the passenger-side window, where his 28-year-old wife, Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo, was sitting. The 6-year-old, Hazel Camila Turcios, was buckled into a car seat in the back.
“She started crying because the ICE agents were hitting hard on the passenger side windows,” Turcios recalled.
The child was still crying as the agents hustled her mother away in handcuffs. Turcios did his best to comfort her.
“The only thing that I could think to tell her was, ‘Everything is gonna be fine. Mom’s gonna come back home soon,’” Turcios told the Daily Beast.
Turcios and Villafranca-Trejo had been together since late 2018, when they met while working in a hotel’s housekeeping department. Both came from Honduras, he at 14 in 2014, she at 18 in 2016. She had a son, and Turcios began to raise him as he would his own. Their daughter was born in 2020. They were married in 2022. He enlisted in the Army that same year.
“Just to say thank you to this country, to serve this country, that gave me everything that I have right now,” he told the Daily Beast.
His wife tended to the kids and kept the household going as he went almost directly from basic training to a nine-month deployment in the Middle East.
“She’s always been there, by my side,” he reported. “She’s been, like, my everything since I know her. She’s supported me on every decision that I made.”
Between the deployment and further training, Turcios missed three of his daughter’s birthdays. But he was there for the most recent one in May. He decided that the ones he had missed made this one that much sweeter.
“I was able to be with her, and make up for the other ones that I missed,” he told the Daily Beast.
In the meantime, the couple had applied for green cards. He became a citizen in 2024. They learned that Villafranca-Trejo had become the subject of a deportation order after she failed to appear for a hearing in 2017 that she had not been aware was even scheduled. She applied to have the case reopened, but it was denied even though she is married to a U.S. service member and has no criminal record. She filed an appeal that has been pending as her husband was promoted to sergeant and received orders for an upcoming transfer to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
On the Fourth of July that marked the nation’s 250th birthday, Turcios and his family were in Oklahoma, finalizing where they would be living and exploring their new home base for what promised to be their next adventure.
“We all were excited about it,” he told the Daily Beast. “Everything was ready for me to go. I had my orders. I already found a house, so everything was set up. We were just waiting for the date to leave.”
But then back in Texas on July 11, they suddenly heard that siren. Villafranca-Trejo was taken in handcuffs to Camp East Montana detention center in Fort Bliss. The camp is the nation’s biggest, housing as many as 5,000 immigrants in huge tents. It has a reputation for brutal guards, unsanitary facilities, insufficient food, and generally shameful living conditions.
Villafranca-Trejo got an infection after she was issued used underwear that may not have been properly laundered, Turcios said. A week’s wait to see a doctor was followed by several days to get the prescribed medicine.
Turcios visited his wife at the facility every day, while also caring for the kids and pondering what to tell their daughter, who kept asking when mommy was coming home.
He also had his duties as a sergeant.
“I’m an NCO,” he said. “I have to take care of my soldiers. And, you know, be the most that I can be.”
School started on Aug. 4, and Hazel Camila entered the first grade.
“She likes school, but I can notice it’s not the same because she’s not with her mom,” Turcios said. “And she asks me every day, ‘Where is mom? When is mom coming home?’ And me not being able to tell my 6-year-old daughter when her mother comes home, it’s just hard to explain or hard to tell her, not having an answer to that.”
On Aug. 18, Turcios arrived at the camp for his daily visit with his wife only to be told that she was not there.
“They told me, ‘She’s getting moved. We don’t know where she’s going, but she’s getting moved, so you won’t be able to see her today,’” Turcios recalled.
He went home and was awakened by a phone call at 3 a.m. informing him that she was standing on the tarmac at an airport, about to be placed on a plane for Honduras. She was suffering what appeared to be a panic attack, he was told, and was insisting they had to hold off on deportation because she had a pending immigration case.
“They were asking for proof that what my wife was saying was true,” Turcios recalled. “I gave them the proof, and they confirmed it.”
He got a second call 8 a.m.
“They were like, ‘Okay, your wife is gonna be taken off the plane, and she’s gonna go back to the detention center,’” he said. “And that was it. They didn’t tell me anything else.”
On Sunday, Turcios arrived at the camp for another daily visit only to be told, “You won’t be able to see your wife today because she’s getting moved,” he said.
“And I was like, ‘Where are you guys taking her?’ They were like, ‘We don’t know. They don’t tell us anything. We just know that she’ll get moved.’”
At 2 p.m. on Monday, his wife called him.
“She told me that her name was on the list, but she didn’t know what the list was for,” he recalled.
Several hours later, she called again, this time from Honduras. ICE had lost her phone, but she had managed to borrow one.
“For like, less than a minute,” Turcios told the Daily Beast. “She was crying, scared, because she hasn’t been in that country for, like, over 10 years and it’s just everything’s new to her. You don’t know anybody.”
When asked for comment, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson replied, “Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo, an illegal alien from Honduras, was removed from the United States in accordance with our laws. She received due process.”
Turcios’ orders for Fort Sill had been canceled, and it did not seem there would be a great adventure there. But he said he is getting U.S. passports for himself and their daughter, so he will soon at least be able to tell their daughter when she will see mommy again.
“All the plans that we had, they’re gone,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out how I might keep my family together for now.”
Even with his family torn apart, he said, he will keep serving his country.
