ICE claims that they are going after “the worst of the worst” in order to protect public safety and national security—but that public message doesn’t match up with a new pair of articles by the Associated Press that documents 50 cases of spouses and parents of military families who are being deported right now.
That includes the wife of Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, an active-duty military service member who was stationed at Fort Bliss in Texas. She was snatched by ICE in front of their six-year-old daughter in a parking lot, and now he is worried about how to focus on his military career while trying to hold his family together.
The AP articles by Jack Brook, Safiyah Ridge, and Aaron Kessler looked at 50 cases, but there are no doubt many more cases that remain invisible. Like the myth of “automatic citizenship” that comes with marrying a U.S. citizen, there is a myth that simply serving in the military means you get citizenship and won’t face deportation. Not true. There is a path to citizenship, but there are all kinds of barriers to finishing the citizenship process when your priority is completing your military duties, not filling out paperwork.
Our country has broken its promise to immigrant veterans many times, both in times of war and times of peace. Just look at how President Truman betrayed Filipino World War II veterans through the Rescission Act of 1946. Or how military veterans have been abandoned by our social safety nets after their service, left to cope with substances, convicted of crimes for which most Americans would get a second chance, and then deported back to countries they barely know.
Our country is breaking our social contract with veterans and active duty military today by going after them and their families—and that’s what I find so alarming about the AP articles. As a veteran myself, I find the 50+ cases in the AP story to be a sign that our immigration system is so broken and ICE is so out of control that not even people who put their lives on the line in uniform are protected. Many of these spouses and children are literally going through the process they were told to go through—and ICE is still arresting them.
To understand the deeper story behind the story, I talked with Danitza James who runs Repatriate Our Patriots who fights for fairness for military families impacted by the immigration system. I’ve been fortunate to get to know Danitza recently through our conversation as part of my series “Veterans for Good” leading up to Memorial Day and through her work alongside American Families United, an organization that represents about 1.5 million U.S. citizens with spouses who have no pathway to legal status.
Danitza is a powerful voice, she speaks from experience as an Army veteran who wasn’t able to naturalize through military service, and her work now with Repatriate Our Patriots is a source of inspiration and hope for me when I feel hopeless. We talked on Instagram Live today about the larger context of the AP articles, the cases she’s working with right now, and why this reporting is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come. Follow Repatriate Our Patriots on Instagram.
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