US immigrant veterans come home to fight another ‘war’
Hopes dashed as military gives no guarantee of US citizenship
Miguel and Esperanza Perez stood outside Chicago’s immigration courthouse, clutching an American flag folded into a triangle in a gesture of respect.
The flag once flew over a US military base in Afghanistan, where the couple’s son Miguel Perez Jr. served two tours in a Special Forces unit.
The 38-year-old was now jailed, and at the mercy of an immigration judge inside the courthouse.
The military veteran, a legal permanent resident, was subject to deportation after being convicted of a drug crime.
Had he been a citizen, he simply would have served his prison time and been released. But now he was trying to avoid becoming one of the hundreds of US military veterans, all honourably discharged, to be similarly deported.
Mr Perez thought he had automatically become a naturalised citizen when he joined the military — a common misconception among immigrants enlisted in the US armed forces.
Enlistees qualify for expedited naturalisation, but they still have to apply and go through the process.
Some are unaware of the requirements, and others cannot comply — because they are serving in foreign lands. Still others have been victims of bureaucratic bungling.
Convicted in 2010 for the manufacture or delivery of more than two pounds (one kilogram) of cocaine, Mr Perez was sentenced to 15 years in jail. He was remanded in custody by immigration authorities last year after being granted early release from prison.
In Mr Perez’s case, his family hoped their son’s military service would mitigate his crime and convince the judge to let him stay.
“I hope today I bring home my son,” Esperanza Perez said before a cluster of television news cameras outside the courthouse. “My son is my hero, is your hero.”
She was optimistic that the judge would consider the mental scars of war that drove her son to drug use, and the potential dangers he could face in Mexico, with its drug cartels. US laws, perversely, allow deported veterans to return when they are dead — for burial in a US military cemetery.
The ranks of deportees include veterans of US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. No one has an exact count, but the American Civil Liberties Union has tracked down nearly 300 of them.