A Navy Sailor's Father Was Arrested by ICE While He Served Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln
Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, a Nicaraguan national and the father of an active-duty U.S. Navy sailor, was arrested by Border Patrol agents during a vehicle stop in Key West, Florida, on a Saturday in August 2026. At the time, Aviles was waiting for his son, Joshua Aviles, to return from deployment in the Middle East CNN.
Joshua Aviles is a sailor assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that has been operating in the Middle East during the Iran war. He had been deployed for over nine months. According to his account, his father was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency commonly known as ICE, which handles detention and deportation of non-citizens The Guardian.
The USS Abraham Lincoln departed the Middle East on Saturday, August 23, after the USS George Washington arrived in the region the previous week to relieve it. The Lincoln had not made a port call, meaning a scheduled stop at a foreign harbor for rest and resupply, in more than 200 days. That set a modern-day record for consecutive days at sea. The carrier's extended deployment with no shore leave places Joshua Aviles's situation in a particular operational context: he was serving through one of the most grueling carrier deployments in modern Navy history while learning that his father had been detained and faces deportation proceedings.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal agency that oversees ICE and Border Patrol, confirmed that Aviles Roa entered the United States illegally and would remain in ICE detention pending removal proceedings. In a statement, DHS said: "Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation's laws" The Guardian.
The arrest fits within the broader framework of immigration enforcement under the current administration, which has maintained a hardline posture on unauthorized immigration. The DHS statement's explicit reference to military family connections suggests the agency anticipated that Aviles Roa's relationship to a deployed service member would draw public scrutiny, and chose to preemptively frame enforcement as evenly applied regardless of familial military ties.
The intersection of immigration enforcement and military service raises questions that go beyond the individual case. Active-duty service members and their families have, at various points in recent U.S. history, been afforded specific forms of immigration relief. These include parole in place, a policy allowing certain family members of military personnel to stay in the country legally without leaving to apply, and expedited naturalization pathways for non-citizen service members. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, and military parole in place provisions have created expectations among some military families that service-related ties may afford a degree of protection from removal. DHS's statement indicates that, at least in this instance, the agency does not consider a child's active-duty service to be a mitigating factor warranting discretion.
There is also the question of operational impact. The Navy, like other service branches, has protocols for emergency leave and notification when a service member's family member faces a crisis. Whether Joshua Aviles was afforded any such consideration, or whether his carrier's record-setting deployment constrained the Navy's ability to respond, is not clear from the available reporting. The Lincoln has now departed the Middle East, which may eventually facilitate Joshua Aviles's return to U.S. soil, though the timeline for that return and for any reunion with his father depends on both the carrier's transit schedule and the progression of his father's removal proceedings.
The arrival of the USS George Washington to relieve the Lincoln ends a deployment that has drawn attention not only for its length but for the operational tempo, meaning the pace and intensity of military missions, it demanded of the crew. More than 200 days at sea without a port call is an extraordinary period by any modern standard, and the conditions aboard the Lincoln during that stretch, combined with the individual burdens carried by sailors like Joshua Aviles, paint a picture of sustained operational strain on forward-deployed naval forces.
Aviles Roa's removal proceedings will proceed through the immigration court system, a process that can take months or longer. His detention will continue in the interim.
