An immigration judge terminated the deportation case against Narciso Barranco, a 49-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico who has lived in the United States since the 1990s — and whose three American-born sons have served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Judge Kristin S. Piepmeier issued the order on January 28, finding that Barranco had provided sufficient evidence that he is the father of three U.S.-born sons in the military, making him eligible to seek lawful status. The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that it would appeal.
Barranco, a landscaper, was arrested by federal agents last June outside an IHOP restaurant in Santa Ana, California, while clearing weeds with a trimmer. He was taken to a Los Angeles detention center, placed in deportation proceedings, and released in July on a $3,000 bond with an ankle monitor. That monitor has since been removed, and his check-ins have been discontinued.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin reiterated the government's position on the arrest on Thursday:
"The agents took appropriate action and followed their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation in a manner that prioritizes the safety of the public and our officers."
According to the New York Post, DHS claims Barranco refused to comply with commands and swung his weed trimmer at an agent. His son, Alejandro, a Marine Corps veteran who aided the 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan, told the AP in June that his father did not attack anyone, had no criminal record, and is kind and hardworking. Witnesses uploaded videos of the scene, though no independent adjudication of the competing accounts has been presented.
Barranco's lawyer, Lisa Ramirez, offered a blunter assessment:
"Mr. Barranco has had zero criminal history. They came after him because he was a brown gardener in the streets of Santa Ana."
That's a serious accusation — and one that the facts as presented don't quite support. Federal agents enforcing immigration law encountered a man without legal status. That's not racial targeting. That's the job. Whether the level of force was proportional is a legitimate question. Whether the arrest itself was somehow illegitimate because Barranco is sympathetic is not.
Here's where this story gets genuinely complicated — and where conservatives should resist the urge to treat every immigration case as interchangeable.
Narciso Barranco is an illegal immigrant. He has been one for roughly three decades. That fact doesn't disappear because his sons turned out to be extraordinary Americans. But those sons — three Marines, including two currently on active duty and one veteran of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal — do change the legal calculus. That's not sentimentality. That's existing law.
Parole in Place is a program specifically designed to protect the parents of U.S. military personnel from deportation and provide a pathway to permanent residency. Barranco has applied. His lawyer estimates the process could take six months or more. If approved, he'll receive a work permit.
Judge Piepmeier didn't grant amnesty. She found that Barranco met the eligibility criteria to seek lawful status through a program that exists precisely for cases like his. DHS disagrees and is appealing — which is its right and, depending on the legal arguments, may be the correct procedural move.
Barranco himself, in a phone interview conducted in Spanish, kept it simple:
"I feel happy. Thank God I don't have that weight on top of me."
The left will use Narciso Barranco as a prop. Count on it. Alejandro Barranco already spoke at a Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing on February 12. The narrative writes itself: heartless enforcement machine targets gentle father of heroes.
Conservatives shouldn't take the bait — in either direction.
This isn't the case that discredits immigration enforcement. A man living illegally in the country for thirty years is not evidence that the system works. It's evidence that the system failed for three decades before anyone noticed. The fact that Barranco has no criminal record and raised three Marines speaks well of him as an individual. It says nothing about whether borders should be enforced or whether millions of other illegal immigrants deserve the same outcome.
But this also isn't the hill to die on for enforcement hawks. Congress created Parole in Place because it recognized something conservatives should have no trouble saying out loud: when a family sends three sons to defend this country, that family has skin in the game that most Americans — native-born or otherwise — never will. One of those sons helped evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul. Two more are serving right now.
The proper conservative position here isn't complicated. Enforce the border. Deport criminals. Remove people who have no ties, no contributions, and no claim to be here. And when the narrow exceptions that the law already provides apply — when a man's sons bled for the flag — let the process work.
DHS will appeal. The courts will sort it out. That's the system functioning, not failing.
Three sons wore the eagle, globe, and anchor. Their father trimmed weeds outside an IHOP. Somewhere between those two facts is a country still trying to figure out what it owes and to whom.
