U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a combat veteran who lost both legs while serving in Iraq, sharply criticized the Trump administration on Tuesday after federal immigration authorities arrested the father of a Navy sailor who had just spent more than nine months deployed at sea, calling the arrest a betrayal of the nation’s service members and their families.
Duckworth posted her statement on X on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at 9:06 a.m., directly referencing the case of Joshua Aviles, a sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose father was detained by Border Patrol agents in Florida while his son remained deployed overseas.
“Joshua Aviles spent more than 9 months at sea serving our country. While he was away, Trump arrested his father. There is no higher betrayal to our heroes than to have a family member deported by the same nation they sacrificed to defend. This has to stop.”
The Arrest That Prompted the Statement
Duckworth’s post came in direct response to reporting from PBS NewsHour detailing the arrest of Luis Manuel Aviles, 48, a Nicaraguan-born handyman who has lived in the United States for 19 years and holds a work permit. According to his wife, Argelia Aviles, 47, Luis Aviles was arrested by immigration authorities after leaving his Key West, Florida, home to take his car to a mechanic.
“He dedicates himself only to work so he can put food on the table at home. He is a good father. He loves his children with all his soul,” Argelia Aviles told PBS.
At the time of his father’s arrest, Joshua Aviles was entering his ninth month of deployment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier that has spent well over 250 days at sea without a port call, a stretch that has set a modern U.S. Navy record and drawn sustained scrutiny from lawmakers and military families over supply shortages and deteriorating crew morale.
Department of Homeland Security’s Response
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Border Patrol agents arrested Luis Aviles on a Saturday in Key West and said he would remain in ICE custody while the government pursued his deportation. DHS defended the arrest in a statement issued the following day.
“Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” the department said, adding that the Trump administration “does not pick and choose which laws to enforce.”
The Sailor’s Reaction From Aboard the Lincoln
Joshua Aviles learned of his father’s detention while still aboard the carrier, which has been deployed in the Middle East as part of the broader U.S. military response tied to Operation Epic Fury, the conflict with Iran that began in late February 2026. He described the news in a Facebook post.
“This is heartbreaking for me. I don’t know how I can mentally continue working 12+ hour days knowing that my dad is somewhere, possibly treated like a criminal,” Joshua Aviles wrote, according to PBS.
His sister, Katherine Delgado, 28, said Joshua enlisted in part because he believed military service would improve his father’s chances at citizenship and free the family from what she described as a persistent fear of arrest. Delgado, who called her brother her “ride-or-die,” said she spent weeks without knowing his whereabouts once the deployment dragged on, later learning he was not receiving adequate food and spending hundreds of dollars on care packages, some of which never reached the ship.
A Statement Echoing Duckworth’s Long-Standing Position
Tuesday’s post was not the first time Duckworth has used nearly identical language to describe the deportation of military family members. When she and then-Representative Gil Cisneros introduced the PROTECT Military Families Act, a bicameral bill aimed at shielding military households from deportation and forced separation, Duckworth used the same framing now applied to the Aviles case.
“There is no higher betrayal to our heroes than to have one of their family members deported by the same nation they sacrificed to defend,” Duckworth said at the time. “In his ICE raids, Donald Trump is targeting servicemembers, Veterans and their loved ones—separating families who have made tremendous sacrifices for our country.”
Part of a Broader Congressional Push
Duckworth has also joined a wider effort among congressional Democrats to investigate the administration’s approach to military-family deportations. Earlier in August, she was among more than 60 Democratic lawmakers, led alongside Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who sent a letter accusing the Department of Defense of collaborating with the Department of Homeland Security to detain and remove hundreds of servicemembers, veterans and their families.
“These efforts imperil military readiness, weaken service members’ morale, and betray America’s promises to the people who put their lives on the line for our nation,” the letter stated.
The Defense Department responded to the lawmakers in a December letter obtained by the Associated Press, stating it had not implemented any recent policy changes regarding noncitizen military family members and had not conducted an analysis of how deportations affect troop readiness or morale.
A Pattern Documented by the Associated Press
The Aviles case is one of at least several dozen documented instances of military family members being detained under the current administration. An Associated Press investigation found that at least six family members of active-duty troops have been deported and one self-deported, marking the first known accounting of such detentions, which the federal government does not formally track. In one case, the wife of a U.S. soldier who had spent more than a month in immigration detention was pulled from a deportation flight to Brazil after AP’s reporting brought attention to her case.
The investigation centers on the erosion of “military parole-in-place,” a longstanding immigration benefit that has historically allowed spouses, children and parents of active-duty service members and veterans to obtain legal status from within the country, provided they had not overstayed a visa or previously sought legal status at the border.
Legislative Efforts to Codify Protections
Duckworth has repeatedly sought to write parole-in-place protections into law rather than leave them subject to executive discretion. She previously introduced the Military Family Parole in Place Act, which would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to grant parole to the parents, children, spouses or widowers of servicemembers and veterans who were not dishonorably discharged.
“Our troops serving overseas should be focused on doing their jobs, not worrying about whether their family members will be deported,” Duckworth said when introducing the legislation, which was co-sponsored by Senators Ed Markey, Catherine Cortez Masto, Amy Klobuchar, Robert Menendez, Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons, Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine and Ron Wyden.
The USS Abraham Lincoln’s Record-Setting Deployment
The backdrop to the Aviles case is the USS Abraham Lincoln’s extraordinary deployment. The carrier left Naval Base San Diego on November 21, 2025, on what was initially planned as a standard rotational deployment. That plan changed after Operation Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026, when the Lincoln and its Carrier Air Wing 9 were redirected into the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to support strikes against Iran.
By mid-August, the carrier had gone more than 260 consecutive days without a port call, a stretch that surpassed prior modern records and left its roughly 5,000-person crew, according to Navy families and lawmakers, contending with reported shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health and disrupted mail service. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously said conditions aboard the ship were “completely misrepresented.”
The Navy confirmed the Lincoln left the Middle East roughly a week before Duckworth’s Tuesday post, after nearly seven months in theater, with the strike group’s overall deployment reaching 274 days as of late August.
A Father Waiting for His Son’s Return
According to Argelia Aviles, her husband had been looking forward to his son’s homecoming for months and grew distraught when the deployment stretched past its original expected end date.
“He was excited,” she said. “He wanted to hug his son, as he hadn’t seen him for nine months.”
Katherine Delgado said her brother is expected to return home soon as the Lincoln is brought out of the Middle East theater, but noted the bittersweet nature of that homecoming.
“He’s gonna come home without his father,” Delgado said, according to PBS.
Outlook
As of Tuesday, Luis Manuel Aviles remained in ICE custody while the government pursues his removal, and Duckworth’s post signals that Democratic lawmakers intend to continue elevating individual cases like his as part of a broader campaign against the administration’s military-family deportation practices. With the Lincoln’s crew now returning stateside after a historically long deployment, the Aviles case is likely to remain a focal point in the ongoing debate over how the administration’s immigration enforcement intersects with military service and readiness.