We Are Deporting Veterans.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWgQsu03J8U]

What the actual fuck? This is absolutely nuts. But it's also very real.

The formal name is emblazoned in English on a banner above the entrance: “Deported Veterans Support House.”

It’s a meeting venue, crash pad, information hub and hangout for a distinct group: U.S. military veterans expelled from the very country they served.

Most came to the United States as children and became permanent legal residents before joining the military. But after returning to civilian life they committed crimes that led to deportation.

Advocates for immigrants say there may be thousands of deported veterans now scattered across the globe.

Hector Barajas, who founded the support house four years ago, has identified 350 deported U.S. veterans born in more than 30 countries, including India, Italy, Mexico and the nations of Central America. Scores have passed through the support house.

The veterans there speak English like Americans, reminisce about school days back in the United States, watch U.S. sports on television and share war stories. Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July are big holidays for them.

All have families in the United States. Many veterans carry wallet-sized snapshots of sons, daughters, siblings and grandchildren from whom they are now separated.

Still, the vibe at the house is not self-pity or regret, but repentance for missteps and a quest for redemption.

The veterans are well aware that there is little sympathy in the U.S. for ex-convicts. But they argue that they have done their time, paid their debts to society, and are now serving what amounts to life sentences — permanent banishment from the country they regard as home.

“Everyone makes mistakes, some bigger than others,” said Barajas, 40, a former paratrooper in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. “But some people can’t get past that you did something wrong.”

Convicted of a felony in 2002 for shooting at a vehicle with people inside — nobody was hurt — he served 13 months in prison and was paroled.

He was deported in 2010, one of tens of thousands of immigrants with criminal records expelled by the U.S. government in recent years in a trend that has continued with the arrival of the Trump administration.

This isn't the only story of veterans being deproted either.

Only in 'Murica.

See ya around,

Aspie

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mimi's picture

member? Many legal permanent alien residents, who joined the military and ended up to become Veterans of War, have accepted and were offered US citizenship. Now if they have committed crimes when they returned into civilian life after leaving the military service, what would you prefer, if it were your loved one? Would you prefer they be deported into their country of birth, or sent into prison in the US?

I am not sure what my answer would be.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@mimi
These are veterans who were deported AFTER serving sentences and being released from prison.

Sounds to me like a particularly nasty form of "Indian giving" - of the sort practiced by the US Government against the Indians. Make glowing promises, then renege on them on the slightest excuse.

That's Standard Operational Bullshit as perpetrated nowadays.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Deja's picture

@TheOtherMaven
Well, at least one that I heard of while watching On a Knife Edge over the weekend. It was on an alternative PBS channel (Houston 8.4). The elder of the family told how he was taken into custody back when he was a younger activist, and was followed by his friends. They all thought the cops were driving him out to the middle of nowhere to off him. The cops turned their vehicle around, and fired multiple times into the friend's vehicle. One friend, a newly returned vet from Vietnam, was hit and bled to death.

http://www.pbs.org/video/knife-edge-trailer-7tpqfq/

They don't care about anyone - even if we do their killing in far away lands. Expendable, all of us.

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Wink's picture

@TheOtherMaven

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

mimi's picture

@TheOtherMaven
it just shows how scared I am. I hoped that deportation would save the 'criminals' some prison time in the US.

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Wink's picture

@mimi
They serve time here, do the time, get out.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

divineorder's picture

time.

I think it is fcked up to give immigrants citizenship for becoming fodder for all the endless war fail.

Maybe someone can help me understand why we should not be changing this.

Something else fcked up:

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Brand New Congress Retweeted

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.