Princeton, Texas — Retired staff sergeant Wilmer Trujillo served roughly 20 years in the U.S. Army and the Texas National Guard, with deployments and assignments in Afghanistan, Iraq and South Korea. 

But Trujillo says he is now facing the most difficult battle of his life, as he implores the government he began serving in uniform after high school to not deport his wife.

"It breaks me because the country I worked my entire life for is ripping my family apart, and taking away my wife," Trujillo told CBS News inside his home in the Dallas suburb of Princeton. "It makes me sick to my stomach."

"I've never thought I'd be in a situation where I'm begging my own country to let my wife go so we can do our thing the right way," the veteran added.

Trujillo's wife of six years, Honduras native Arelys Barahona-Martinez, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week during a check-in appointment in Dallas. He said she had been checking in with ICE routinely over the past years, without incident, until her unexpected detention on June 10.

While she lacks any criminal record, immigration officials said Barahona-Martinez entered the U.S. illegally twice, first in 2005 and then in 2018. In a statement confirming her arrest, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, cited a deportation order issued against Barahona-Martinez over two decades ago, in 2005.

She's the latest close relative of a U.S. service member or veteran arrested by ICE as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign.

On Monday, Barahona-Martinez called Trujillo through a video call from inside the ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas, where she's being held.

"It is truly hell, to be judged as a criminal," Barahona-Martinez said in Spanish during the video call.

"The only thing I'm asking them is for them to let me be with my family and to complete the process with them," she said, breaking down in tears.

Barahona-Martinez may have a path to get permanent U.S. residency, or a green card, based on her marriage to a U.S. citizen. But she would need to convince an immigration judge to reopen her deportation case and convince the government to cancel her illegal entries through a program known as parole-in-place designed to protect military families from deportation.

Whether ICE would allow her to continue that process outside of detention remains an open question. Under President Trump, the agency has prioritized the arrest of those with deportation orders, regardless of whether they have criminal records, and made it much more difficult for detainees to be released.

Barahona-Martinez and Trujillo met in 2019, a year after she returned to the U.S. She said she came back after leaving in 2006, because her U.S.-born son was being recruited by gangs in Honduras and needed medical attention for a genetic disorder, known as neurofibromatosis, that causes tumors throughout the body.

Over recent years, Trujillo and his daughters from a prior marriage have become very close to Barahona-Martinez and her son Idben, he said.

Now 20, Idben, who lives with Trujillo, said the house feels "empty" without his mother.

"She came to this country just to save my life," he told CBS News, referring to his medical condition.