Hector Barajas served honorably in the Army, but it wasnβt enough to keep him from being deported.
After his discharge in 2001, he got into trouble with the law in California. He served his sentence for illegally discharging a firearm, but because he was not a U.S. citizen and his crime was deemed a deportable offense, he ended up in Mexico, far from his family.
Barajas recently joined forces with U.S. Rep. RaΓΊl Grijalva, D-Ariz., to help deported veterans find their way back to the United States.
βNo veteran should die on this side of the border (in Mexico) only to be put in a box and buried by Uncle Sam with full military honors,β Barajas said Thursday via Skype from Tijuana, Mexico, at a news conference held in Washington, D.C.
In an ironic twist of policy, deported veterans are separated from services and family while theyβre alive, but are reintegrated into the United States when they die, Grijalva said at the press conference.
Grijalva and 18 co-sponsors introduced a bill on July 8 that would help bring veterans like Barajas back to the United States to reunite with family and access their benefits as veterans.
βThe thought that people who have sacrificed so much for our nationβs defense and safety are kicked out with such disregard is utterly appalling,β Grijalva said.
The Veteran Visa and Protection Act would give many deported military veterans legal immigration status or stop deportation proceedings. They could also be eligible for naturalization, which was available to them during their service.
Under the billβs provisions, each veteran would be evaluated based on eligibility requirements such as whether their offense was violent and whether they pose a risk to national security, Grijalva said.
βThis bill is about ensuring every single veteran, regardless of where they were born, is treated with the same deference and respect that they all earned through their service in uniform,β he said.
Many veterans get into trouble with the law because they canβt access the services they need and self-medicate, bill co-sponsor U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., said at the press conference.
βSome of them have seen terrible things,β Vargas said. βSome of them have been through literally hell because theyβve been through war.β
As a result, they are punished twice: first by serving their sentence in prison and then again by being deported, he said.
Non-citizens have served in the U.S. military since the nationβs founding. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported more than 100,000 members of the U.S. military have been naturalized since 2001.
In a recent report, βDischarged, Then Discardedβ the ACLU of California interviewed 59 veterans from 22 countries who served in wars as far back as Vietnam and who have been deported or are facing deportation.
The ACLU attributes these veteransβ deporta-tions in part to 1990s immigration laws that reclassified minor crimes as aggravated felonies and eliminated immigration judgesβ discretion to consider veteransβ military service.
Service members are eligible for naturalization while serving, but in many cases the federal government failed to provide adequate information and assistance or mishandled applications, the ACLU report says.
