‘It hurts all of us’: Mass deportations ensnare immigrant service members, veterans and families

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PHOENIX (AP) — Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, U.S. Army veteran Sae Joon Park kept in mind a warning from an immigration officer: If Donald Trump were elected, Park would likely be at risk for deportation.

Park was 7 when he came to the U.S. from Seoul, South Korea. He joined the Army at 19 and received a Purple Heart after being shot in Panama. After leaving the military, he lived with PTSD, leading to addiction issues.

After a 2009 arrest on a drug charge, Park was eventually ordered deported. But because he was a veteran, he was granted deferred action, allowing him to remain in the U.S. while he checked in with immigration officials annually.

For 14 years he did just that, while raising children and building a new life in Honolulu. Then in June, when Park went in for his appointment, he learned he had a removal order against him. Instead of facing extended time in detention, he chose to self-deport.

“They allowed me to join, serve the country – front line, taking bullets for this country. That should mean something,” he said.

Instead, “This is how veterans are being treated.”

During his first term in office, Trump enacted immigration policies aimed at a group normally safe from scrutiny: noncitizens who serve in the U.S. military. His administration sought to restrict avenues for immigrant service members to obtain citizenship and make it harder for green card holders to enlist -– actions that were unsuccessful.

Now, military experts and veterans say service members are once again targets of the president’s immigration policies.

“President Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and he didn’t exempt military members, veterans and their families,” said retired Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, a lawyer who helps veterans facing deportation. “It harms military recruiting, military readiness and the national security of our country.”

Under the Biden administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a policy stating a noncitizen’s prior military service was a “significant mitigating factor” that must be considered in enforcement decisions. The policy also offered protection to noncitizen family members of veterans or those on active duty.

In April, that policy was rescinded and replaced with one saying “military service alone does not automatically exempt” one from immigration enforcement.

Both policies barred enforcement actions against active-duty service members, absent aggravating factors. Under the new policy, noncitizen relatives of service members are not addressed.

Some service members, like Park, are choosing to self-deport. In other instances, immigrant family members of soldiers or veterans have been detained -– including Narciso Barranco, a father of three U.S. Marines who was detained earlier this year in Santa Ana, California.

“The people being ripped from our communities are hardworking, honest, patriotic people who are raising America’s teachers, nurses and Marines,” Barranco’s son, veteran Alejandro Barranco, testified in July to a U.S. Senate subcommittee. “Deporting them doesn’t just hurt my family. It hurts all of us.”

There is no publicly available data on how many veterans are being affected, though ICE is supposed to track service member removals and the Department of Homeland Security is typically required to share that information with Congress.

A 2019 federal report found 250 veterans had been placed in removal proceedings between 2013 and 2018. News21 could find only two DHS reports tracking removals of veterans. One, covering the first half of 2022, said five veterans had been deported; another, for calendar year 2019, said three veterans had been deported.

In June, U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, and nine members of Congress wrote to federal officials seeking the number of veterans currently facing deportation -– noting “some estimates” put the overall number of deported veterans at 10,000.

Her office did not return messages. DHS and ICE also did not respond to questions.

Federal lawmakers have proposed several bills to protect immigrant service members and their relatives. One measure, introduced in May, would give green cards to parents of service members and allow those already deported to apply for a visa.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat and Army veteran, has sponsored some of that legislation. She told News21: “This is about the men and women who wore the uniform of our great nation, many of whom were promised a chance at citizenship by our government in exchange for their service. It’s about doing the right thing.”

As of February 2024, more than 40,000 foreign nationals were serving in active and reserve components of the Armed Forces, according to the Congressional Research Service. Another 115,000 were veterans living in the U.S.

Serving in the military has long been a pathway to citizenship, with provisions providing expedited naturalization dating back to the Civil War.

During designated periods of hostility, noncitizens who serve honorably for even one day are eligible to apply for naturalization if they meet all criteria. The U.S. has been in a period of hostility since 2001.

Despite that longstanding policy, the Department of Defense, during Trump’s first term, required service members to complete six months before obtaining military documents required to apply for citizenship.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued, and in 2020, a federal judge struck down the change. The Biden administration wound up rescinding the six-month policy.

Nevertheless, ACLU attorney Scarlet Kim said: “If you don’t get your citizenship while you’re serving and then you’re discharged … you can potentially become vulnerable to deportation.”

That’s the situation facing Army veteran Marlon Parris.

Parris, born in Trinidad, has been in the U.S. with a green card since the 1990s. He served in the Army for six years and received the Army Commendation Medal three times, according to court records.

Before his discharge in 2007, he was diagnosed with PTSD – which was cited when Parris pleaded guilty in 2011 to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced to federal prison.

Upon his release in 2016, the government assured him he would not be deported, according to the group Black Deported Veterans of America. But on Jan. 22, agents detained Parris near his home in Laveen, Arizona. In May, a judge ruled he was eligible for deportation.

His wife, Tanisha Hartwell-Parris, told News21 the couple plan to self-deport and bring along some of the seven children, ranging in age from 8 to 26, who are part of their blended family.

“I’m not going to put my husband in a situation to where he’s going to be a constant target, especially in the country that he fought for,” she said.

A report published last year by the Veterans Law Practicum at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law noted that more than 20% of veterans with PTSD also have a substance use disorder, and that can result in more exposure to the criminal justice system.

That situation is “the most common scenario in terms of how deportation is triggered,” said Rose Carmen Goldberg, who oversaw completion of the report and now teaches in the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School.

The report stressed that even though deportation does not disqualify veterans from benefits earned through service, “Geographic and bureaucratic barriers may … stand in the way.”

In 2021, the Biden administration launched the Immigrant Military Members and Veterans Initiative (IMMVI) to ensure deported veterans could access Veterans Affairs benefits. The program offered parole to those needing to return to the U.S. for legal services or health care.

Jennie Pasquarella, a lawyer with the Seattle Clemency Project, said the biggest flaw of the program is that parole into the U.S. is temporary – a “dead end” if a veteran doesn’t have a legal claim to restore legal residency or to naturalize.

“We had asked the Biden administration to do more to ensure that there was a further path towards restoring people’s lawful status beyond parole,” she said. “Basically, we didn’t succeed.”

In the absence of aid in the U.S., more veterans are turning to help elsewhere.

José Francisco Lopez, a native of Torreón, Mexico, and Vietnam War veteran, experienced PTSD and addiction. He eventually went to prison for a drug-related crime and in 2003 was deported.

“I almost gave my life in Vietnam, and now they just throw me away like garbage,” he said.

For years, Lopez thought he was the only deported veteran in Mexico – until he met Hector Barajas, a deported Army veteran who in 2013 founded the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana.

Inspired, Lopez opened his own Support House in Ciudad Juárez.

Lopez, 80, is now a legal resident of the U.S. but splits his time between El Paso and Juárez, providing deported veterans housing, food and advice about how to apply for benefits. Since opening the support house in 2017, he’s helped about 20 people.

Back in Seoul, Park, 56, is adjusting to life in a country he hadn’t visited in 30 years. When he first arrived, he cried every morning for hours.

“It’s a whole new world,” he said. “I’m trying to really relearn everything.”

Park’s attorney started a petition to urge prosecutors to dismiss his criminal convictions, to help cancel his deportation order. More than 10,000 people have signed.

Park said he’s grateful for the support but has little faith he will ever be allowed to return to the U.S. He said: “This is not the country that I volunteered and fought for.”

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News21 reporters Tristan E.M. Leach, Sydney Lovan and Gracyn Thatcher contributed to this story. This report is part of “Upheaval Across America,” an examination of immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://upheaval.news21.com/.