Veterans who lack citizenship fear being swept up in Trump’s deportations

By STEPHEN GROVES
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — After serving with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq, Julio Torres has the American flag and Marine Corps insignia tattooed on his arms to show his pride in serving a country he calls home.

And after struggling with post-traumatic stress syndrome, drug addiction and a related criminal charge following his deployment, the 44-year-old has found new purpose as a pastor preaching a message of freedom to those facing similar problems.

But these days, his community in East Texas feels more like jail than the land of the free.

As President Donald Trump works to carry out his mass deportation agenda, Torres, who was born in Mexico and migrated legally to the U.S. when he was five years old, is afraid to venture far from home. Despite holding a green card residency permit and a record of service in the U.S. military, Torres was detained by immigration authorities last year under the Biden administration. He fears that Trump’s aggressive ramp-up of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement raids could only mean more trouble.

“Do I want to leave this nation? No. I want to serve it. I want to continue to serve my community,” Torres told The Associated Press. “It breaks my heart that I fought for this nation to raise my children in this nation, and now I have to pull my children out of this nation if I get deported. Then what did I fight for?”

Torres is not alone. There are well over 100,000 military veterans living in the U.S. who do not have citizenship, according to estimates in recent years by the Congressional Research Service. Despite military recruiters frequently describing service as a fast-track to citizenship for soldiers and their family members, the Trump administration’s immigration agenda is putting them at renewed risk of deportation.

Democrats in Congress have begun to raise alarm at the recent spate of military veterans who have either been forced out of the country or had family members detained by ICE. A bipartisan bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, aims to address that by requiring the Department of Homeland Security to identify whether immigrants are U.S. military veterans and provide them with an opportunity to apply for lawful immigration status.

The legislation, which is also being supported by Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida and the delegate for American Samoa, Amata Coleman Radewagen, would also extend the deadline and make it easier for military members to apply for citizenship.

“It’s very important for Americans to understand the contributions of noncitizens to our national security,” Takano told the AP. “They’re often posed as threats to our personal safety, but this is a story about how they play an essential role — tremendous numbers of our current military forces are noncitizens.”

From veterans’ honors to deportation threats

Torres remembers anger welling up as he was taken to an immigration detention center in Texas last year after he was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. He was trying to reenter the country after a trip to visit relatives in Mexico. While Torres had a green card, the criminal charges from 10 years ago for drug possession violated the terms of his permanent residency.

“I was angry that I served a nation that now did not want me. I was angry that I served a nation that broke me, and after they broke me, they wanted to just throw me away,” he said, then added, “I’m still angry that I don’t have the liberty to go to the store with my kids because I’m afraid of ICE stopping me and arresting me.”

While Torres was unsure why he was released after five days in detention, ICE had a policy at the time of considering U.S. military service when deciding whether to take immigration enforcement action. The Trump administration has issued new policy memos to do away with that kind of discretion.

Fear of being deported has worsened the symptoms of PTSD for Torres. He has night terrors. He cries when he is out of earshot of his wife and children, then tries to convince them he is doing ok. He fears that if he is deported to Mexico, he would be under threat from cartels because he is a veteran and minister.

Other veterans who have been deported say that those kinds of threats are real. David Bariu was deported to Kenya in 2008 after he had served in the Army and Air Force Reserve because an army recruiter had enlisted him while he was in the U.S. on a student visa — an offense for which the recruiter was eventually court-martialed.

Bariu said that he struggled with depression after being held in detention for one year, then being deported to Kenya where he struggled to find work. Living in an area where the Al-Shabaab terrorist group was active, Bariu did not want to tell anyone he had served in the U.S. military.

“I didn’t want to risk putting my life into danger,” he said, adding, “The U.S. government is deporting veterans to hostile environments.”

Eventually, Bariu was able to apply for U.S. citizenship under a program set up under the Biden administration for deported veterans. He moved back to the U.S. and helps run an organization to support other deported veterans called the Deported Black Veterans of America.

The group holds weekly Zoom meetings with deported veterans around the world, connecting them with immigration lawyers, advising them how to access benefits due to them for their military service and generally encourage each other.

The naturalization process for service members

Immigrants with lawful permanent residency have long been able to gain U.S. citizenship through military service, but actually completing the process for naturalization can be difficult, especially when service members are moving between military bases or stationed overseas.

Takano’s bill would allow service members to apply for citizenship during their basic training and establish a review process for immigration removal proceedings. Other Democrats this Congress have put forward proposals to quickly extend green cards to the family members of service members.

However, Trump during his first term made several moves to make it more difficult to gain citizenship, including adding mandatory wait times for service members to apply for citizenship and closing U.S. immigration offices overseas and at several military bases. A federal judge ruled that the administration could not enact the mandatory wait times, but now that Trump is president again, his administration has tried to once again appeal that ruling.

The Department of Homeland Security has also stood by its actions when veterans have been forced to leave the country, saying it is enforcing the law.

Republican leaders in Congress have so far shown no willingness to challenge Trump’s immigration policies. Still, Torres is hoping that the push to have Congress take up the issue can avoid the toxic politics of immigration and instead be cast as a veterans’ issue, where there is sometimes bipartisan agreement.

“This is about a veteran,” he said, then added, “I love my nation. And yes, even though this nation at this moment in time does not consider me part of this nation, I consider this to be my nation. I consider this my homeland.”