After serving with the Marine Corps in Iraq, Julio Torres has the American flag and Marine insignia tattooed on his arms to show his pride in serving a country he calls home.
After post-traumatic stress syndrome, drug addiction and a criminal charge following his deployment, the 44-year-old has found new purpose as a pastor preaching a message of freedom to those facing similar issues.
But these days, his community in East Texas feels more like jail than the land of the free.
Torres, who was born in Mexico and migrated legally to the United States at age 5, is afraid to venture far from home as President Donald Trump works to carry out his mass deportation agenda. Torres has a green card residency permit and a record of service in the U.S. military, but he was detained by immigration authorities last year under the Biden administration. He fears that U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement raids under Trump could only mean more trouble.
“Do I want to leave this nation? No. I want to serve it. I want to continue to serve my community,” Torres told The Associated Press. “It breaks my heart that I fought for this nation to raise my children in this nation, and now I have to pull my children out of this nation if I get deported. Then what did I fight for?”
There are well more than 100,000 military veterans living in the U.S. who do not have citizenship, according to estimates in recent years by the Congressional Research Service. Despite military recruiters frequently describing service as a fast-track to citizenship for troops and their family members, the Republican administration’s immigration agenda is putting them at renewed risk of deportation.
Democrats in Congress have raised alarm about instances of military veterans either forced from the country or whose family members were detained by ICE. A bipartisan bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., would require the Department of Homeland Security to identify whether immigrants are U.S. military veterans and provide them with an opportunity to apply for lawful immigration status.
“It’s very important for Americans to understand the contributions of noncitizens to our national security,” Takano told the AP. “They’re often posed as threats to our personal safety, but this is a story about how they play an essential role — tremendous numbers of our current military forces are noncitizens.”
The legislation, backed Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and the GOP delegate for American Samoa, Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, would also make it easier for military members to apply for citizenship.
“Fighting for America is one of the greatest, most noble acts a person can do, and it breaks my heart that noncitizen veterans might be deported despite their service,” Salazar said in a statement.
From veterans’ honors to deportation threats
Torres remembers the anger when he was taken to an immigration detention center in Texas last year after being stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He was trying to reenter the country after visiting relatives in Mexico. The criminal charges from 10 years ago for drug possession violated the terms of his permanent residency.
“I was angry that I served a nation that now did not want me. I was angry that I served a nation that broke me, and after they broke me, they wanted to just throw me away,” he said, then added, “I’m still angry that I don’t have the liberty to go to the store with my kids because I’m afraid of ICE stopping me and arresting me.”
Torres was unsure why he was released after five days in detention. ICE had a policy at the time of considering U.S. military service when deciding whether to take immigration enforcement action. The administration has issued new policy memos to do away with that kind of discretion.
Fear of being deported has worsened his PTSD symptoms. He has night terrors. He cries when out of earshot of his wife and children, then tries to convince them he is doing OK. He fears that if deported to Mexico, he would be under threat from cartels because he is a veteran and minister.
Other veterans who have been deported say that those kinds of threats are real. David Bariu was deported to Kenya in 2008 after he had served in the Army and Air Force Reserve. An Army recruiter had enlisted Bariu while he was in the U.S. on a student visa — an offense for which the recruiter was court-martialed.
Bariu said he struggled with depression while detained for one year before he was deported to Kenya, where he struggled to find work. Living in an area where the al-Shabab militant group was active, Bariu did not want to tell anyone he had served in the American military.
“I didn’t want to risk putting my life into danger,” he said, adding, that “the U.S. government is deporting veterans to hostile environments.”
He eventually was able to apply for U.S. citizenship under a program set up under the Biden administration for deported veterans. Bariu moved back to the U.S. and today helps run Black Deported Veterans of America.
The naturalization process for service members
Immigrants with lawful permanent residency have long been able to gain U.S. citizenship through military service. Completing that process can be difficult, especially when service members are moving between military bases or are stationed overseas.
Takano’s bill would allow them to apply for citizenship during their basic training and establish a review process for immigration removal proceedings. Other Democrats are proposing ways to quickly extend green cards to the family members of service members.
Trump, in his first term, took steps to make it tougher to gain citizenship. He added mandatory waiting times for service members to apply for citizenship and closed U.S. immigration offices overseas and at several military bases. A federal judge ruled that his administration could not enact the mandatory waiting times, but Trump’s second-term team has tried once again to appeal.
Homeland Security has also stood by its actions when veterans have been forced to leave the country, saying it is enforcing the law.
Salazar said she was supporting the new bill out of concern that the administration is not making a distinction between “those who came to commit crimes and destabilize our country, and those who came here to work and build.”
“The vast majority of these veterans are in that second category, and they have put their lives on the line to defend this country. Congress is the branch that can lead the way on making these key policy distinctions,” she added.
Republican leaders have so far shown no willingness to challenge Trump’s immigration policies. Still, Torres is hoping that the push to have Congress take up the issue can avoid the contentious politics of immigration and be cast as a veterans issue, where there is sometimes bipartisan agreement.
“This is about a veteran,” he said. He then added: “I love my nation. And yes, even though this nation at this moment in time does not consider me part of this nation, I consider this to be my nation. I consider this my homeland.”
