The ‘curse’ of veterans caught in the US deportation machinery

After 15 years behind bars, Sergeant Jose Barco — a decorated veteran wounded in the Iraq War — was released from prison on the second day of Donald Trump’s second presidency. His freedom, however, lasted only a few moments. Outside, immigration agents were waiting for him. Since then, he has been held in detention centers, counting down the days to a deportation that now represents both a relief and the latest misfortune in a list that has only grown longer since he joined the U.S. army at 17. His wife, Tia Barco, has only one explanation: it must be a “curse.”

The sergeant, who celebrated his 40th birthday in silence a few weeks ago in a cell among dozens of undocumented inmates, has in fact never known full freedom in his adult life. Born in Venezuela to Cuban parents who fled the Castro regime, he moved to Miami at the age of four, where he grew up as a legal resident thanks to his parents’ refugee status. As a teenager, he enlisted and completed two tours in Iraq. A few years after returning home, he got into a fight during a night out that ended in gunfire. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison for attempted murder. He served more than a decade of that sentence as a model inmate before being granted parole — only to be immediately detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Sergeant Barco’s case is not unique. In the United States, there are more than 100,000 military veterans without citizenship and, therefore, at risk of deportation during Trump-era crackdowns, according to congressional data. The armed forces allow noncitizens who are legally in the country to enlist, offering them a range of benefits. The most enticing of these is an expedited path to citizenship — though it is not a guarantee, even if many recruits believe it to be.

But military service takes its toll. If a third of all veterans are arrested at some point, those who are not citizens lose virtually all the rights they gained when they signed their military contracts. Suddenly, they cease to be honorable former combatants and become criminal illegal aliens — first in line for deportation.

These cases are not officially counted. They only surface sporadically — through a media campaign or a newspaper article. Among all the people EL PAÍS has spoken with, estimates range from just a handful of active cases to hundreds. The number of deported veterans certainly reaches into the thousands, since the practice began in the mid-1990s with the passage of a new immigration law that stripped former service members accused of a long list of crimes of their rights — even if they were later found innocent.

The lack of official support for these veterans is countered, however minimally, by a close-knit community that has taken on this cause as its own — often because it is their own. There are several organizations in the U.S. and abroad, but their reach is limited, especially given how opaque and geographically dispersed these cases are. One of them, the Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center, which operates on both sides of the San Diego–Tijuana border, estimates that there are veterans at risk of deportation in every corner of the United States, and already deported veterans in at least 40 countries.

The stateless veteran

In Sergeant Barco’s case, however, there is no country willing to take him. In April, after a failed attempt to deport him to Venezuela, he effectively became stateless. “Venezuela and America were meeting in Honduras to exchange people. But the Venezuelans became suspicious, noting that ‘He doesn’t look Venezuelan. Who is he?’ They talked to him and grew more convinced, saying, ‘Listen to him talk. He talks like a Cuban.’ He grew up in Miami, and he is Cuban by blood. Ultimately, they decided, ‘No, we’re not taking him.’ So, out of over 200 men on the plane, the ICE agents had to fly back to Texas with him because they refused to take him” his wife, Tia, recounts via video call from their home in Houston.

Almost six months later, Barco remains in detention, trapped in a difficult-to-resolve legal limbo. After Venezuela’s refusal, his lawyer — himself a veteran who took the case pro bono — has managed to have it reopened, with the goal of canceling the deportation order and allowing Barco to remain in the U.S. as a legal resident. But the government insists on deporting him and has issued another removal order — first to Venezuela again, if not there, then to Cuba, and finally to Mexico.

“I don’t see Venezuela accepting him. I don’t see Cuba accepting him because although he’s Cuban by blood, he has no ties to Cuba. He doesn’t have Cuban nationality. Mexico is possible, but at the same time, it’s gotten strict over there. So, now we’re like, is he going to go to Africa where they’ve been sending people?” fears Tia, who has become an expert on immigration matters herself, though she’s consumed by the pessimism that comes naturally after so many defeats.

She has supported her husband from a distance since he went to prison in 2009. At the time, they were newlyweds and Tia was three months pregnant. Their daughter, now a teenager, has never been able to have a close relationship with her father, although he has been able to provide for the family through his veteran’s pension — even if they have never fully been a family. Making that possible is Barco’s greatest motivation to keep fighting.

Fighting has defined the sergeant’s entire life, ever since he donned a uniform, shouldered a rifle, and went to Iraq aged 19. On November 11, 2004 — Veterans Day — an improvised explosive device blew up the truck he was riding in with several members of his platoon. Barco managed to free two comrades trapped under the burning wreckage, but his commander died, and he sustained severe injuries, including brain trauma and burns over much of his body. He was sent back to the United States to recover, but all he wanted was to return and complete his unfinished mission.

After a basic physical recovery, he went back to Iraq for 15 months. Upon completing that tour and returning to the U.S., he and several of his comrades each ran into legal trouble. The most serious case was Sergeant Barco’s.

One night in 2008, at a party in Colorado, he got into a fight with the host. Accused of stealing alcohol, he was surrounded, intimidated, and beaten. The recently returned war veteran drew a licensed firearm and fired at the ceiling. As people threw stones at him, he left the house, got into his car, and fired toward the porch. One bullet hit the leg of a 19-year-old pregnant woman. He was sentenced to 32 years for that incident, 20 years for the first shot, and three more for brandishing a weapon in a threatening manner — 55 years in total.

For Tia, her husband’s personal situation should have been taken into account when sentencing him: “If someone has PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and TBI [Traumatic Brain Injury], now they have X-rays that can actually see into the brain to see exactly how the brain is damaged, but at that time they were just throwing pills at them, and not really knowing how the pills were interacting. The night that Jose went to this party, he was drinking and taking Ambien, which is a heavy sleeping [pill]. People who take Ambien on a regular night might not remember it. So, there are often times where he’s like, ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember,’ which might seem like a copout, but it’s really not.”

Court documents show that the government recognizes Barco’s military service and takes seriously the prospect of initiating deportation proceedings against someone who has served in the U.S. army. “However, the respondent would not currently be in proceedings if he had not shot at multiple people,” they stress. The Department of Homeland Security, the prosecuting agency in the immigration case, did not respond to this newspaper’s request for comment.

The veteran who committed no crime

In some cases, no crime has even been committed. That’s what Melissa Chaudhry, wife of Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry, 52, a veteran in a wheelchair who has been detained by ICE in Washington State since late August, denounces. His story begins in the 1990s, when he emigrated from his native Pakistan to Australia. There, he studied computer science and worked as a taxi driver. In that job, he suffered abuse and racist attacks, but what would stay with him was a conviction for allegedly stealing a passport and a credit card that passengers had left in his car.

In the late 1990s, he moved to the United States, and in 2001, he received his permanent resident status. Already married to his first wife, he joined the National Guard, where he distinguished himself as a mental health specialist. Then the September 11 attacks occurred, and he was called up for regular duty. “No one saw that coming and here he is, a brown man named Muhammad with an accent, in the U.S. army. As you can imagine, the tone shifted considerably,” says Melissa during a video call from her car, accompanied by their two youngest children, both under two, in the midst of the legal proceedings that now fill her daily life.

While Chaudhry was completing his training, he was offered a position in counterintelligence due to his background and proficiency in multiple languages, but he declined. In response, he was told that his citizenship request would never be granted and that they would make his life a living hell, according to his family. Melissa believes he was likely included in a secret program being implemented at the time, although not authorized by Congress, called CARP. Essentially, it is a list of Muslim individuals considered a national security risk, whose immigration applications are systematically denied.

What’s more, shortly before he was due to deploy to war, he suffered what he describes as torture at the hands of his fellow soldiers, after which he has been unable to walk. This permanent injury was in addition to another sustained shortly before, during a night training exercise, when he stumbled while dismounting a truck with all his gear and was trampled by his entire platoon. Since then, Chaudhry has lived with a broken spine and severe brain injuries that cause debilitating migraines. Later, he developed a thyroid condition that threatens to leave him blind.

He was honorably discharged from the army in 2005 — his own recruiter described him as an exemplary soldier with leadership potential — but that is when his long immigration ordeal began. His citizenship application was denied due to the prior theft allegation in Australia, and in 2008 he received his first deportation order, which he has been fighting ever since. In 2018, all arguments against him were dismissed, and the judge granted him legal residency retroactive to 2001. It seemed he had finally succeeded, but the government at the time appealed without giving proper notice, and the case was reopened. It has now reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one step below the Supreme Court.

It was in this context that he was summoned for an interview with immigration authorities at the end of August. Melissa begged him not to go — he had already given all the statements required, and for months ICE had been arresting people at immigration courts. He attended the meeting in good faith, but left in custody.

Since then, he has been held in appalling conditions at one of the country’s largest immigrant detention centers, the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. He is not receiving medication, and his migraines are unbearable, his wife reports. He is also losing his vision due to lack of access to treatment. Meanwhile, his legal case has no resolution in sight until the appeals court issues a verdict — which is not expected to happen until early next year.

Melissa, who has taken on much of his defense herself, has submitted 183 letters from the community attesting to his character. Chaudhry is a highly active member of his community: he helps people with computers, serves on the boards of several foundations, providing shelter for abused women and children, and offering free psychological support, among other contributions. For now, however, all he can do is listen to the men detained alongside him.

The open door

Aware that luck rarely favors people like him, thousands of miles south in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Francisco López keeps his door open for Barco, Chaudhry, or any other deported veteran. His organization, Deported Veterans Support House, provides support to anyone arriving with a similar story. The second floor of his home serves as a refuge for anyone expelled from the country they once were willing to die for.

At 80 years old, the memory of when he was 23 and joined the U.S. army to fight in Vietnam under the promise of citizenship is as vivid and bitter as when he was deported in 2003. At that time, he decided to stay in a city where, if you stand on the banks of the Río Bravo, you can see the buildings, roads, and houses of the United States.

In 2023, his request to return to the U.S. was approved, and he now spends some days on the U.S. side of the border in El Paso, and others in his home-refuge. The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign led him to decide to live with a foot on each side. “Here I am, still with the doors open for the veterans who are deported, because you never know when one will arrive,” he says in front of the folded U.S. flag, which will remain that way until the last deported veteran returns.

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