Congressional Democrats said they are investigating the Trump administration's efforts to deport military service members and their families after The Associated Press found more than 50 active-duty troops’ spouses and parents have been detained by immigration authorities.
In a letter sent Sunday evening to the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Democrats said they will investigate whether the Pentagon and DHS are coordinating to deport military service members and their families.
“These efforts imperil military readiness, weaken service members’ morale, and betray America’s promises to the people who put their lives on the line for our nation,” according to the letter, which was signed by more than 60 lawmakers and provided to the AP.
The Pentagon declined to comment, stating it would “reply directly to the authors of the letter.”
DHS told the AP that it values service members' contributions and “U.S. military service alone does not automatically grant lawful immigration status, or exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”
The VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In their letter, the Democrats provided an extensive list of questions to the agencies. They said the apparent collaboration between DHS and the military to deport troops’ families “raises both ethical and legal concerns.”
“Donald Trump is breaking our country’s promises to service members by tearing apart dozens of military families who were promised immigration protections,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. “That’s just plain cruel, and it’s hurting our military readiness and morale.”
Warren's office is leading the probe alongside Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth and several House Democrats.
The AP investigation found President Donald Trump's administration has rolled back protections for military families and departed from longstanding bipartisan consensus to carry out its mass deportation agenda. Service members have been forced to take leave of their duties, including delaying deployment, to care for their children after their spouses were detained.
The lawmakers pressed the administration on why military recruiters are still promoting immigration protections.
Citing the AP's reporting, the lawmakers urged the Trump administration to restore policies that had previously shielded military service members' families from immigration enforcement while allowing them to adjust their legal status.
“This report is appalling and shows the unbelievable cruelty at the center of the Trump immigration agenda,” said Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. “We will be demanding answers and accountability.”
The Republican chairs of the armed services and veterans’ affairs committees, Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker and Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week, Trump established the Military Spouse Commission, chaired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer Rauchet, to develop policies and recommendations for improving life for troops' spouses.
“Military spouses are intrinsically linked to the good order, readiness, and retention of our military,” Trump stated in a letter published in the Federal Register on Aug. 6. “Their support and contributions to our Armed Forces are crucial to mission success.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The Defense Department said in a December letter to Democratic lawmakers, obtained by the AP, that it had not implemented any recent policy changes for noncitizen family members in the military and has not conducted analysis on how deportations impact troop readiness and morale.
Danitza James, president of Repatriate Our Patriots, an organization providing support to military families and veterans facing deportation, said troops are being betrayed.
“Our military service members are the ones that sign on the dotted line to go and defend our country and maybe not come back,” James said. “They trust our government to take care of their families, and they’re not doing that.”
Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Wendy Gbeve, not pictured, shows pictures of her parents in her home in Marysville, Calif., on Thursday, July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)
Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo shows photos of his wife, Maisa Lopes Eliaser, a Brazilian national who is detained by ICE, near the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center where she is currently held, in Basile, La., Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Joseph Vidrine)
Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo poses with a photo of his wife, Maisa Lopes Eliaser, a Brazilian national who is being detained by ICE, before visiting her at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, La., Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Joseph Vidrine)
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 9, 2026--
Certinia today unveiled the System of Action for services businesses, which understands context, applies judgment, and then acts on trusted data and reasoning, so that every decision drives toward real business outcomes.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260909879512/en/
According to the 2026 Global Service Dynamics Report, an independent survey of 1,000 services and IT leaders worldwide, nearly all (98%) have deployed AI in their organization, but only 20% say it has exceeded expectations. Among those reporting success, 70% describe their operations as aligned or fully integrated across sales, delivery, finance, and customer success. Certinia's System of Action is built for exactly that kind of connectivity — uniting the data, the judgment, and the ability to act so that services organizations can run their businesses with certainty.
Certinia's System of Action powers modern services organizations through three integrated components. The first is foundational context: Certinia brings together professional services, customer success, financial management, and CRM data with the unstructured reality of daily work — calls, threads, meetings — into one unified source of truth, closing the gap between what's happening on the ground and what the business needs to know in real-time. The second is compounding intelligence; built on more than 17 years of Certinia's services domain expertise, drawn from the breadth of real projects, timecards, resourcing decisions, and estimates processed across its workflows, so judgment sharpens with every decision. The third is agentic action, which carries that judgment out exactly when and where it's needed, bringing the right knowledge and reasoning to every action across the services lifecycle.
Strengthening the System of Action is the largest expansion of Certinia's Veda AI suite to date, delivering an unprecedented solution purpose-built to operate businesses and accelerate sales & delivery across the entire services lifecycle. This includes new agents, a doubled library of Veda Intelligent Actions (VIAs) that bring Certinia's services expertise directly into existing workflows, and deployment options that provide the flexibility for organizations to use the AI in ways that best fit their stack, strategy, and requirements.
"AI can only move the needle for our customers when it's grounded in real business context and judgment they can trust — a system that understands the business, reasons through it, and acts with little to no margin for error," said DJ Paoni, Chief Executive Officer, Certinia. "That's what our System of Action delivers. Only Certinia can combine a trusted, unified data foundation with our breadth of services expertise and deep business reasoning to meet the accuracy standards services businesses require — and it's why our latest agentic capabilities help customers unlock stronger margins, faster time-to-outcome, and greater customer value."
“Organizations that connect management efficiency gains to delivery quality improvements achieve the strongest overall ROI. The key design principle: AI must be integrated across the full life cycle, not deployed as isolated tools in individual functions,” said Mickey North Rizza, Group Vice President, Enterprise Software and Agents, IDC ¹.
New Veda Agents to Run the Business and Accelerate Sales & Delivery
Certinia's expanded suite of agentic capabilities introduces a lineup of 14 new out-of-the-box Veda agents to accelerate sales and delivery.
Each agent turns the unstructured context of daily work into organizational memory, so automation gets sharper, capturing best practices with every project instead of starting from zero each time.
Using Veda's new agentic capabilities, services teams are able to:
Expanded Veda Intelligent Actions and Capabilities to Streamline Workflows
Certinia has more than doubled the library of Veda Intelligent Actions (VIAs) from 64 to 135. Veda Intelligent Actions are bite-sized, reusable capabilities that bring Certinia's deep domain expertise directly into a customer's workflow and whatever tools their teams already use.
New VIA capabilities offer benefits across every part of a services business:
AI Your Way Provides a New Level of Deployment Flexibility
Most vendors force customers to either adopt their proprietary AI or bring their own and lose depth. With Certinia’s new AI Your Way features, service firms no longer have to compromise. These capabilities provide flexibility across the Veda AI suite, letting organizations use the AI and agentic framework that fits their stack, strategy, and requirements.
Certinia's AI Your Way capabilities give services organizations the option to:
Whether an organization is standardized on Agentforce, building on Claude or Microsoft Copilot, or wants Certinia's own native AI platform to do the heavy lifting, every path draws from the same library of trusted, governed actions grounded in the right context and judgment.
Committing to 100% Agentic Capability Coverage by Year End
Today’s release accelerates a broader trajectory that will culminate in 100% agentic capability coverage across Certinia’s System of Action by year-end, comprising 40+ agents and 300+ VIAs across the services lifecycle. Every professional services, customer success, and financial workflow will be able to be executed by an agentic capability or a human, giving organizations total flexibility in how they operate.
The Advantage That Compounds
As AI models become increasingly interchangeable, competitive advantage will shift to organizations holding the specific data and judgment those models depend upon to act. While every services organization will soon have access to roughly the same AI intelligence, they will not have the same underlying data, institutional judgment, or track record of decisions made and outcomes fed back into ongoing judgment.
That is the unique advantage Certinia has that no other PSA vendor built on siloed functionality can replicate. Certinia's depth of proprietary context and intelligence is what makes Veda the most complete and trustworthy agentic solution built on real business judgment, and it is why Certinia is the durable advantage the world's leading services organizations are built upon to help them protect margins, shorten time-to-outcome, and grow customer value with certainty.
To learn more and see the System of Action in practice, register for Certinia's live webinar Insight to Impact: Introducing the System of Action for Modern Services on September 30, 2026, as product experts demonstrate the system and how it can benefit your organization.
¹ IDC, Operationalizing AI in Professional Services: Practical Steps Toward an Intelligent Operating Model, #US54625226, June 2026
About Certinia
Certinia is the leading System of Action for services businesses, powering organizations with the unified source of truth, services expertise and reasoning, and agentic action to bring the right knowledge and judgment to every decision across the entire services lifecycle. Purpose-built for professional services, customer success, and financial management, the world’s leading services organizations rely on Certinia to maximize margins, deliver faster time-to-outcome, and grow customer value with certainty. Certinia is backed by Haveli Investments, TA Associates, General Atlantic, and Salesforce Ventures. For more information, visit www.certinia.com.
Certinia's System of Action architecture, spanning Professional Services, Customer Success, and Financial Management.
