I pledge allegiance...

In February, I posted Support Our Troops: Your Tax Dollars At Work, in which I wrote about a young man-- a lawful permanent resident-- who is subject to deportation from the United States for a drug conviction despite the fact that he was honorably discharged from the military after serving in Iraq. Similarly, in another case I once handled, the client had immigrated to the U.S. in 1958 as a child and served during the Vietnam War. Not surprisingly, his experiences in that controversial war led to a heroin addiction, which later resulted in a drug sale conviction arising out of his need to support the habit. Ultimately, fifty years after immigrating, he was deported from this country because of the offense.

An ABC-affiliated news station in San Diego, CA recently covered this issue. See, http://www.10news.com/index.html . Their reporters went to Tijuana, Mexico and interviewed deported military veterans. According to the story, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch deported 16 veterans in 2007, 29 in 2008 and 57 in 2009. Additionally, the ICE official in San Diego with the power to stop the removal of veterans from the United States has never exercised prosecutorial discretion to halt such removals, and most probably the same holds true for ICE officials across the country. When asked why he did not do so, the San Diego officer simply responded that the crimes committed by these former soldiers were too serious to warrant favorable treatment. Obviously, he does not believe that honorable military service, combined with other positive equities, might outweigh a criminal offense. My guess is that he doesn’t consider any humane factors when approaching these cases

The irony in all of this is that my local newspaper, The Buffalo News, published a piece on March 25, 2010 about advocates for veterans who are raising funds to assist ailing servicemen and their families when they are in need of mental health care. The article mentions an Army sniper who had a breakdown after his combat tours in Iraq. He threatened and assaulted employees of the Veterans Administration and went to jail for the offense. A leading advocate for area veterans asks, "how can you say the answer for [this man] is federal prison?" That is indeed a fine point. Yet I cannot help but ask why the same sympathy is not shown toward noncitizen veterans. Why does ICE not consider whether the psychological trauma of military service might have caused a veteran a mental health issue, such as substance abuse, which then led to the unlawful conduct which in the end results in his or her potential deportation?

In a documentary entitled Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas), which aired this past week on PBS, filmmaker Monika Navarro explores this critical issue as well. Her uncles had been raised and educated in the United States since childhood, and were proud veterans of the U.S. military. Tragically in 1999, the two brothers were forced to leave the only country they'd ever known - and one they'd sworn to protect by serving in the U.S. military. They were deported to Mexico, and had to start over and forge new lives in an unfamiliar "homeland." Within two weeks, one of the brothers overdosed on heroin in a Tijuana hotel room. His body was left unclaimed for two months in a mass grave.

Sadly, I bet most ICE officials simply look at the conviction records and forget about the human beings behind the documents.