Deported Veterans One Step Closer to Getting Help After Committing Crimes, Serving Time Neda Iranpour - CW6
go to original March 16, 2017

Hector Barajas talks about his foundation; Deported Veteran Support House, explaining why veterans are being deported and how everyone can help. (Heart of Hollywood Motion Pictures )

Foreign-born U.S. veterans who have committed felonies and done time are often deported after their release. It’s a long-standing policy that has left some former servicemembers living in countries they barely know.

Hector Bajaras – currently in Tijuana – is one of them. He said, “It was very difficult because even thought I was born here this is not my country, this is not where I was educated, I don’t know the system.”

Barajas was a U.S. Army paratrooper who served with the 82nd Airborne. He was sentenced to three years in prison for his involvement in a driveby shooting. No one was hurt. After his release in 2004, his punishment, he says was far worse. He was deported to Mexico, seperated from his daughter. He said, “I believe because I paid my debt I should not have been deported.”

He returned to the U.S. illegaly but was caught and sent back again in 2010. Now he’s staying in Tijuana and trying to help some of the dozens of other deported veterans living there, by opening what’s called the “Deported Veterans Support House.”

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher said, “the fact that we even deport veterans was shocking to me.” She is behind a bill that would provide deported veterans legal counsel, “we’re not excusing what they did. There was a crime and they paid for it.”

Just getting a lawyer is no guarantee any of these men or women would be allowed to return to the U.S., but the idea is to make sure they are treated fairly under the law because of their military service.

Learn more at the Deported Veterans Support House website

Read the rest at CW6

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