A two-tour U.S. Army veteran is facing deportation proceedings after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, just days into the new Trump administration.
Forty-five-year-old Marlon Parris appeared for a hearing in immigration court Thursday morning in Florence, Arizona. As reported by the Arizona Republic, Parris was detained a few minutes from his family’s home in Laveen, a neighborhood in southwest Phoenix, on Jan. 22.
Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Parris’ wife, Tanisha Hartwell-Parris, told reporters he’s been held at the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Center since then.
“This isn’t someone who doesn’t belong here, who came illegally, this is not the situation that they are trying to push out into the media,” Hartwell-Parris said.
Parris is from Trinidad and Tobago originally and has been in the United States with a green card for nearly 30 years. He was incarcerated for a nonviolent drug offense more than 10 years ago and released in 2016 — when he was given a “no-interest letter" from ICE saying he wouldn’t be deported.
He’s had no arrests since. But in 2023, a customs agent questioned the letter and took away Parris’ green card when the couple returned from a vacation abroad. They’ve been in legal proceedings over the issue ever since.
Hartwell-Parris said her family was worried about the new Trump administration and how it would impact her husband’s case.
“Based off of everything that’s changed we of course prepared for the worst, with the change in government, but we should not be in this position, just because he does have everything that he is supposed to have to be here,” she said.
Parris’ attorney, Douglas Kouffie, said Parris was already communicating with the government when he was detained suddenly in January.
“It’s our position that Marlon is eligible to be an American citizen just like all of us, he’s fought twice for this country, he’s been deployed twice, he’s laid down his life on two separate occasions for this country,” he said.
Kouffie said in 2023, Parris was given what’s called a deferred admission upon returning to the U.S. from vacation, which means the customs agent didn’t make a decision about whether he could enter the country and instead referred him to an ICE field office. He says he and Parris had already been to the field office and a court hearing for the case by January. And now, he can’t be released on bond due to his classification as an “arriving alien.”
“Because he left the country, and he tried re-entering, they tagged him as an arriving alien – because he’s seeking admission — so they’re treating it as though he’s coming in for the first time, even though it was vacation,” Kouffie said. “They knew where he was, we gave them the correct address, we were in communication with the government … we’ve done everything.”
Kouffie says he doesn’t know why ICE chose to detain Parris now, especially because the agency gave the no-interest letter during the first Trump administration.
“It’s difficult for me to say that it’s a new policy because they were in office at the time that they gave him that letter of no interest, allowed him to stay, and nine years later, the same government comes back and takes it away. I couldn’t necessarily tell you what has changed since then, but he certainly hasn’t done anything wrong since then,” he said.
At the Florence Immigration Court on Thursday morning, Judge Frank Travieso asked the government to reformulate and clarify its charging documents against Parris and scheduled a new court appearance for the case on March 24.
ICE did not respond to questions about Parris’ case or the circumstances of his detainment.
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