Spouses and parents of US citizens are suffering from tightened immigration policies: only 3% of those detained are dangerous criminals.

In the first 14 months of Trump's second term, only 3% of those detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had a criminal record for serious violent crimes. The rest were peaceful individuals, some of whom were close relatives of U.S. citizens, according to ABC News.

In March, Maria Flores took her husband to court in Tennessee to pay a traffic ticket. She expected the visit to be quick, but after several hours of waiting, she realized something was wrong.

"I went out into the hall and kept asking the sheriff if everything was okay," Flores recalled. "They kept telling me they couldn't tell me anything."

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She said she soon saw U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and immediately realized her husband was being detained.

Orlin Carrasco, who came to the United States alone as a 17-year-old from Honduras in 2013, was taken aside along with several others and detained by federal immigration agents after paying court fees, his wife said.

Carrasco has no deportation order and no criminal record, but he was sent to a detention center in Louisiana, where he remains. His lawyer has stated that his detention is unlawful.

"We see a young man from Honduras who has been singled out as a target—and such cases are happening all over the country, despite the detainees having no criminal record," noted Alexandra Lopez. "He works, contributes to society, supports his family, and they are all U.S. citizens."

"I did everything right," Carrasco assured Maria during a video call. "I asked ICE what the reason was, but they didn't answer me."

In response to an ABC News inquiry, the Department of Homeland Security said: "President Trump and Secretary Mullin are now enforcing the law as it was originally written to keep America safe."

Carrasco is one of thousands of migrants who have fallen victim to the Trump administration's new immigration crackdown.

According to an ABC News analysis of ICE data, the measures affected more than 400,000 people without violent criminal records, including parents and spouses of U.S. citizens.

The same data shows that in the first 14 months of Trump's second term, only 3% of those detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had a criminal record for serious violent crimes.

It is also noted that in the first eight months of 2025, ICE detained the parents of approximately 14,450 U.S.-born children. More than 9,700 children experienced a situation where one of their parents ended up in an immigration detention center—an increase from previous years. The parents of more than 7,000 of these children were ultimately deported.

During the same period, ICE detained 4,843 spouses of US citizens. In the first seven months of the president's term, more than 2,000 of them were deported.

The US Department of Homeland Security stressed that it continues to "pursue the most dangerous" and stated that each person detained "committed a crime by illegally entering the country."

The agency claims that it "does not separate families" and that "parents are asked whether they want to be deported along with their children, or whether ICE will release the children to the person the parents choose."

The rise in detentions and deportations has prompted advocacy groups to call for legislative changes that would allow undocumented immigrants from mixed-status families to remain in the United States.

Representatives from American Families United recently traveled to Washington to support the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill being considered in the House of Representatives that would protect some undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Among the campaign's participants were Angela Della Valle and her husband, Carlos. He was released in April after nine months in detention. During this time, Carlos was transferred to more than a dozen facilities, including a Florida facility known as "Alcatraz the Gator."

Angela is a US citizen, and the couple has a son, also a US citizen.

"I know I'm not technically an American, but I feel like one," Carlos emphasized. "I've lived here for so long… more than half my life."

"He loves his country, I love my country, and we've built a life here," Angela noted. "And so many other families are going through the same thing. I'm talking about American women, white American women like me, who don't always have access to resources and the opportunity to be heard."

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The bill's authors, Republican Maria Elvira Salazar and Democrat Veronica Escobar, said they expect the initiative to advance in Congress.

"We're doing this for those who gave their lives to this country," Salazar said. "They're here, they're working, they're participating in the economy."

"For my party, this is a matter of choice," Escobar concluded. "It's unfair to say that this isn't enough for people who live in the shadows, who live in fear and constant uncertainty."

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