Army will halt dropping migrant recruits
SAN ANTONIO — The Army said Thursday it has stopped discharging immigrants who entered the service under a Pentagon program that offered them a quick path to citizenship.
Acting Assistant Army Secretary Marshall Williams suspended the discharge orders July 20 for troops in the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program — MAVNI.
His decision, outlined in a memo to the Army deputy chief of staff, affects people who entered service as part of MAVNI through the Delayed Entry and Delayed Training programs but have not gone to basic training. Both programs are used to funnel recruits into the active-duty Army and Army Reserve.
In a statement, the Army said it suspended processing involuntary separations of MAVNI recruits “in order to conduct a review of the administrative separation process.”
The Army did not say how
many people were affected by the decision, but an attorney who helped implement the MAVNI program said it would not help two soldiers in San Antonio. One, Yea Ji Sea, an Army specialist from South Korea, was discharged Friday from Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. Another soldier, Alina Kaliuzhna, remains here in the Army.
Sea, 29, of Gardena, Calif., and Kaliuzhna, 30, of Crimea, entered the Army under MAVNI, which inducted 10,400 immigrants. It was suspended during the Obama administration over potential security concerns and ended under President Trump.
The program recruited noncitizens with critically needed language and culture skills from 2009 through last year with the promise of granting them an expedited path to citizenship. Though all came in as enlistees, some later became officers.
Defense officials killed MAVNI last year on the basis of potential threats to national security.
A study by military contractor RAND was skeptical, noting that it was “unable to estimate the specific security risk” by MAVNI recruits and troops. It recommended a modest expansion of the program.
So far, no one in MAVNI or any other military immigration program has been deported, but Maj. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, could not say how many recruits or troops had been discharged.
She said that two in every three MAVNI candidates make it through the security and application process. A few thousand failed their security reviews.
Immigrants inducted through the program were required to undergo stringent additional checks before becoming eligible for naturalization. Although no MAVNI soldier can hold a job requiring a security clearance, they nonetheless faced a review required for those seeking a top-secret classification.
A federal lawsuit filed on Sea’s behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles seeks to force U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to settle her 2-yearold citizenship application, asserting that a lengthy delay in deciding it violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act requiring processing within a reasonable time.
A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in a Los Angeles federal district court.
Kaliuzhna, a medic, remains posted to the Camp Bullis training range in northwest Bexar County. She said her family lives in Crimea, which was part of Ukraine when she left there but was annexed by Russia in 2014. She said she would not be a legal resident there if she returned.
Her attorney, Margaret Stock, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who helped implement the MAVNI program, said “Williams’ order is an admission by the Army that Army commanders were unlawfully discharging immigrant soldiers in violation of Army regulations.”
Lt. Col. Nina Hill, an Army spokeswoman, said in a statement that Williams’ action “in no way reflects a change in the Army's compliance with DoD's MAVNI program. We continue to abide by all requirements to include completing a thorough background investigation on all MAVNI applicants.”