Immigrant Veterans Face US Deportation Even After Serving Out Their Prison Sentences Esther Yu-Hsi Lee - ThinkProgress
go to original May 26, 2014

Meet deported Vietnam combat veteran Hector Barrios. Barrios was deported to Mexico due to a criminal conviction related to possession of marijuana. Here's Barrios, in his own words recorded in 2012 on the weekend before Veteran's Day. (Erin Siegal McIntyre)

At the height of the Vietnam War between 1968 and 1969, Hector Barrios was a 1st Calvary Division draftee. “It was a year — every day incoming fire, everything — fighting, you didn’t know if you were going to come back home,” he recalled in 2012. Barrios sustained head injuries from an explosive device. Barrios said that police arrested him for “being in a car with drugs.” After serving out his prison sentence, he was deported to Mexico for marijuana possession.

“I had a green card. They took it away,” Barrios said in the 2012 interview. “But I have my citizenship of the United States in my service paperwork. I took the oath over there. … I think it’s unjust to deport someone who fought for… the United States. It’s unjust.”

According to the Hispanic News Network, Barrios earned less than $5 a day selling tacos between 3pm and 1am. Last month, Barrios passed away in a decrepit neighborhood of Tijuana.

Barrios is not the only non-citizen military veteran to be deported after serving out his prison sentence. After he was deported, Hector Barajas began an advocacy organization called Banished Veterans, which helps deported veterans settle into a country that some individuals have not seen since they were children. Barajas has been permanently banned from the United States for committing a crime after honorably serving as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. He said that he knows at least 111 other veterans have been deported even though they had served in combat, but there may still be thousands more.

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