Deported years ago, Texas veteran allowed to return tou.s.
Frank De La Cruz’s to-do list for September wasn’t too different from the goals of many other Texas military veterans navigating life through a pandemic and economic uncertainty. He needed to renew his ID with Veterans Affairs, send out job applications and, time permitting, look for a reliable used car. He also needed to register to vote.
None of those things seemed possible just a few weeks ago for De La Cruz, 51. For years, he’s been living in Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, after being deported twice following driving while intoxicated arrests. He said he didn’t even knowhewasn’t a citizen before he was deported.
But on Sept. 9, after years of working odd jobs in Juárez while his wife and three children lived in El Paso, U.S. immigration officials had a surprise for him: They were going to let him return to the country where he’d lived since he was 6 years old.
De La Cruz is one of a small numberof deportedveteranswho have been allowed to return to the U.S. The Washington Post reported last year that there are more than 2,000 deported veterans still living abroad, but that’s just an estimate because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t have a policy to identify military veterans it encounters during deportation proceedings, according to a 2019 study by the Government Accountability Office.
The number of deported veterans applying for naturalization has dropped since 2017, and the number approved declined from 7,303 in fiscal year 2017 to 4,309 the following fiscal year, the report found.
For noncitizens, offenses ranging from entering the country illegally or overstaying a visa to being convicted of an aggravated felony or violating gun laws can lead to deportation. And veterans aren’t immune to deportation if they’re not U.S. citizens.
Texas lawmakers have for years tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation to help deported veterans. U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-MCAllen, has twice introduced legislation to repatriate deported veterans, but the legislation died in 2017 and 2019. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-EL Paso, has also raised the issue and publicly supported De La Cruz.
De La Cruz’s attorney, Jennie Pasquarella, said her client’s good fortune was made possible by a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Florida case, Leocal v. Ashcroft, that took driving while intoxicated off the list of crimes that blocked deported immigrants from the chance at naturalization.
“That meant that because he served in wartime, which is a provision that allows for people to naturalize, he was allowed to naturalize,” said Pasquarella, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Libertiesunion of Southern California who was introduced to De La Cruz in 2016 during an ACLU project aimed at helping deported veterans. Pasquarella stayed in touch with De La Cruz and agreed to represent him free of charge.
“There are people out there like Frank who are eligible for some relief and have avenues to come home, and our hope is thatwe can help everyonewho is in that situation,” she said.
De La Cruz was born in Ciudad Juárez, and his family migrated to El Paso legally when he was 6 in search of better economic opportunities in Texas. He graduated from an El Paso high school in 1989, then enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving a tour during the Persian Gulfwar in the early1990s. At that time, De La Cruz was a legal permanent resident.
Pasquarella and De La Cruz filed his citizenship application in 2016.
Earlier this month, he became a citizen after a quick and private swearing-in ceremony at the El Paso port of entry.