They Fought for the U.S. -- Then We Deported Them
Noncitizen veterans. No criminal record. Promised citizenship. And still deported.
Our former daughter-in-law joined the Army on a green card. She trained, served, when where her orders sent her. Now she’s working on a degree in nursing, using her G.I. bill.
Her citizenship? The paperwork is working its way through the system. But she has a strong accent and friends who are also foreign-born. Others like her have been picked up by ICE; will she?
Most Americans don’t know that noncitizens have served in the U.S. military for nearly 250 years. From the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan, immigrants — many without U.S. citizenship — have been part of the armed forces that fought and died under the American flag.
Even now, over 45,000 noncitizens wear the U.S. uniform. That fact surprises many people, who aren’t familiar with the contemporary U.S. military.
Thank You for Your Service… But
You don’t have to be a citizen to join the U.S. military.
Lawful permanent residents (green card holders) have long been eligible to enlist. In wartime, even visa holders and undocumented immigrants have been allowed under programs like MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest), which recruited individuals with key language or medical skills.
And in return? A promise: Military service would fast-track you to citizenship.
But in practice, that promise doesn’t always work out. Citizenship isn’t automatic. You have to apply, pass background checks, navigate bureaucracy, and hope the system works in your favor.
In recent years, however, the administration has erected significant roadblocks to those in uniform gaining their citizenship, including those with critical skills who were promised citizenship for service.
Even for regular applicants, a military status can work against you.
Under the first Trump administration, the very system meant to honor their service betrayed them instead. In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied military naturalization applications at a higher rate than civilian ones. In just the third quarter of FY 2019, one in five military applications was rejected — twice the civilian rejection rate. — Vedia Barnett, Deporting Veterans Is Nothing to Boast About
Deported Veterans: Struggling in Exile
No one knows exactly how many U.S. veterans have been deported. ICE only began tracking military status recently, and older cases were never systematically recorded. A 2019 GAO report found 92 deported veterans in just five years — between 2013 and 2018 — but independent investigations suggest the true number is in the hundreds, if not thousands. An oft-quoted statistic is 94,000.
A 2024 Military Times analysis highlights what happens after deportation: veterans lose access to the VA health care they earned, unless they can navigate the limited and poorly understood Foreign Medical Program. Many can’t.
Others face unsafe living conditions in countries they barely know, often without family, language, or support networks.
In 2021 the Biden administration established the Immigrant Military Members and Veterans Initiative (IMMVI) to provide services for noncitizen service members, their families, caregivers, and survivors. The IMMVI launched a portal for veterans who needed assistance in applying to return to the U.S., and to access any VA benefits to which they would be entitled.
Yet for many this came too late. Many remain in exile, relying on activist networks and legal aid to survive. And many passed away before IMMVI help was available.
Given the current political climate in the U.S., it remains to be seen what the next few years will hold for these veterans.
The people being deported are not strangers to America — they’re the very people it once trusted with a uniform and a weapon. Many served in combat. Most believed they had earned their place here.
A country that sends immigrants to fight its wars but refuses them the right to stay is a country failing to uphold its own values. — Vadia Barnett, Deporting Veterans Is Nothing to Boast About
ICE Didn’t Track Veterans. Now It Does. But Is It Enough?
From its inception in 2003, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had no formal policy for identifying noncitizen veterans — and no way to ensure they received the special consideration ICE’s own internal policies said they should get.
In 2019, the Government Accountability Office (or GAO, the organization that was actively finding “waste and abuse” before DOGE personnel were born) found that:
“ICE had not developed a policy to identify and document all military veterans it encounters… Without such a policy, ICE had no way of knowing whether it had identified all veterans encountered.”
— GAO Report 19-416
Since then, ICE has made real improvements.
In May 2022, ICE issued Directive 10039.2, requiring officers to:
Ask all noncitizens whether they or a close family member has served in the U.S. military.
Evaluate whether that service may qualify them for expedited citizenship.
Document that information in standardized data fields.
Submit monthly reports to headquarters on every case involving a service connection.
ICE also updated its internal systems — like EAGLE and PLAnet — to include veteran status, and revised officer training materials to ensure the new process is understood and used in the field.
These are meaningful reforms. They show ICE is no longer operating in the dark.
But policy is only the beginning. The question now is whether it’s being consistently followed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not report the veteran status of people who have been deported, so the exact number of deported veterans is almost impossible to know. Some organizations have reported there have been hundreds of cases of deported veterans—and this is likely a gross underestimate. — Alex Murillo, Deporting Veterans Betrays America’s Promise
Without accurate and transparent reporting, what does the requirement to check status even mean? Veteran status still does not guarantee protection from removal.
No Malice — Just Momentum. And It Can Be Stopped
This isn’t about blame. It’s about living up to the values we say we cherish: Honor. Service. Responsibility. Fairness.
Most of the laws that enable these deportations were passed in the 1990s — during a wave of tough-on-crime, tough-on-immigration sentiment.
ICE, for its part, was never fully equipped to screen for military service in its systems.
No one set out to deport veterans. But until 2019’s reforms, that’s exactly what’s happened.
What We Can Change
This isn’t just a story about the past. It’s a challenge to the present — and a call to shape what happens next.
Deportations of veterans are still happening.
There is no federal law that automatically protects them. And despite promises, the safeguards remain incomplete.
Two bills aimed to change that:
The Veteran Service Recognition Act (H.R. 7946) Passed the House in 2022. It would have created a legal pathway to permanent residency for noncitizen veterans and protected them from deportation. It stalled in the Senate.
The Veteran Deportation Prevention and Reform Act (S.3212) Introduced in the Senate, this bill sought to place limits on veteran deportations and create clear procedures for case review. It has not passed.
As of now, there is still no law preventing ICE from deporting a veteran — even one who served in combat, and even for minor infractions.
What Reform Should Look Like
We don’t need to start from scratch. These are clear, fair, achievable goals:
Ensure ICE dependably screens for veteran status before initiating removal.
Require higher-level review before deporting any veteran.
Reopen or expedite pathways to citizenship for those who served — even post-discharge.
Only deport veterans who are both undocumented and dangerous.
That’s not extreme.
If we already check for gang affiliations and threats to public safety, surely we can check for honorable service.
What We Owe
We need systems that can tell the difference between a veteran and a threat. Noncitizen veterans deserve more than a one-way ticket out of the country they served. They deserve a shot at citizenship, health and education benefits that are owed to them, and the dignity of being seen.
If You Agree
Contact your senators. Ask them to support bills like H.R. 7946 and S.3212 — or to introduce new ones.
Share this article. Most Americans don’t know this is happening. Tell them.
Support frontline efforts:
Talk about it. If you know veterans, immigrants, military families — share this story.
The more we talk, the harder it is for this issue to stay invisible. We can serve our country best by living up to our responsibilities.
Did you know this was happening?
Do you know someone who served without being a citizen? Were you aware veterans could be deported?
A Last Thought: Posthumous Citizenship
Here’s a painful statistic:
The U.S. has granted posthumous citizenship to over 100 noncitizens who were killed in action in Iraq or Afghanistan.
If these service personnel had survived, one has to wonder how many would be under threat of deportation now.
Hello, Enthusiast! I’ve spent two decades in nonprofits—housing, recovery, crisis care, suicide prevention, disability services, and a lifetime’s worth of other things. Before that, I was a linguist & intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army. The G.I. Bill paid for my M.Div., for which I’m eternally grateful.
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OMG this is TERRIBLE! Fingers crossed that your DIL will be kept safe-ish. Even when she gets her citizenship, ICE is ruthless in who they round up next. Sending you all positive vibes!