UPDATE: The Aviles family, posting on Facebook on Tuesday, reported that Luis Manuel Aviles has been "released" by federal immigration authorities and is back with his family. "We are grateful for all of the support for both Luis and Josh throughout this situation," the family wrote.
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Federal immigration agents made a sweep of arrests in Key West over the weekend — including the controversial detention of a father of a U.S. Navy sailor deployed in the Middle East.
Saturday morning, U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Luis Manuel Aviles, an undocumented immigrant from Nicaragua. His son Joshua Aviles is serving on the U.S. aircraft carrier Lincoln, which just left waters near Iran.
On Facebook, Joshua Aviles wrote: “This is heartbreaking for me…knowing my father is … possibly being treated like a criminal.”
READ MORE: Florida Keys activists rally against 'oppressive' tactics by federal immigration agents
Heather Slivko-Bathurst, a director at the nonprofit Key West Immigrant Support Network, told WLRN: “I’m sure the officers that took the father were not aware of who his son is. And even if he shared that detail with them, I don’t think it would have mattered.
"I think people right now are seen by federal immigration agents as just quotas they need to fill,” Slivko-Bathurst said.
The Homeland Security Department confirmed to WLRN the elder Aviles is in federal custody pending deportation, despite his asylum application.
It added: “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws.”
The elder Aviles arrived in the U.S. two decades ago and worked as a handyman in Key West. WLRN has not been able to determine if he entered the country illegally or on a legal visa that he later overstayed.
Family members told the Associated Press he was taking his car to a mechanic shop on Saturday when he was pulled over and detained.
Slivko-Bathurst said her group confirmed 28 migrants were arrested in Key West over the weekend, including a Haitian migrant who had Temporary Protected Status (TPS) until the Trump administration canceled it this month.
“Once again we are experiencing immigration enforcement upheaval," she said, "because it’s so easy for them to come on our island for a 24-, 48-hour period" and make sweeps.
Meanwhile, conditions on the U.S.S. Lincoln, the aircraft carrier Joshua Aviles serves on, have been widely criticized as substandard. The Trump administration denies it.
The arrest of Aviles and other suspected undocumented immigrants comes at a time when the Trump administration has ratcheted up enforcement efforts.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people during July, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration, according to new figures.
The spike in immigration arrests shows that the administration has continued to advance its mass deportations agenda despite a shift in approach earlier this year from high-profile operations in large American cities that sparked a public outcry to arrests that have garnered less attention but have nonetheless been disruptive.
The July arrest tally of 49,571 marks a 15% jump from 43,021 arrests a month earlier and a 70% increase from 29,241 in February, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in Minnesota, according to government data that was provided by ICE to the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Associated Press.
As part of the surging arrest numbers over recent weeks, ICE officers have made arrests at traffic stops. They’ve increasingly relied on state and local law enforcement partners who are assuming immigration enforcement duties. And they have started to arrest people from Haiti who’ve seen their protections from deportation stripped away.
Texas and Florida accounted for nearly 20,000 of the July arrests, in a sign of how important those states have become to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Both states have leaned heavily into cooperation agreements with ICE called 287g agreements that allow local and state law enforcement to essentially operate as arms of federal immigration enforcement.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
