https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/us/a ... orted.html
The New York Times wrote:
Afghanistan War Veteran’s Deportation Is a ‘Shocking Betrayal,’ Senator Says
...
Mr. Perez-Montes enlisted in the Army in 2001, before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. As a paratrooper and private first class in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, he began suffering from “severe” symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, Senator Duckworth said. He was discharged in 2004.
Seven years later, in 2011, the Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with PTSD related to his service, the senator said. “Without proper V.A. care, he self-medicated with drugs and alcohol to cope with his PTSD, which eventually resulted in his drug conviction,” she added, calling his deportation a “shocking betrayal.”
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Asked about Senator Duckworth’s letter, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday that its Citizenship and Immigration Services division had denied Mr. Perez-Montes’s request for naturalization on March 15 because of the felony conviction.
“After his two tours of duty with the special forces, he came back a broken man due to the horrors he witnessed in Afghanistan and the physical brain injury he suffered while there,” said Christopher Bergin, Mr. Perez-Montes’s lawyer.
He said Mr. Perez-Montes’s role was to repair vehicles in Kandahar, and that his brain injury occurred after a grenade went off near his vehicle.
Mr. Perez-Montes’s family was not alerted before he was deported, Mr. Bergin said.
“His family was never able to hand him some money and some clothes before they deported him in his prison clothes,” Mr. Bergin said. “He had nothing else.”
Mr. Perez-Montes lived in Mexico until he was 8, when he came to the United States on a petition through a family member. He was raised in Chicago and has been a permanent legal resident since age 11, according to a statement on Senator Duckworth’s website. He was never in the country illegally, Mr. Bergin said.
Mr. Bergin said that Mr. Perez-Montes, who has two children who are citizens, was afraid that if he returned to Mexico he would become a target of cartels that would try to recruit him because of his military experience, or kill him if he refused. Mr. Bergin said last week that he planned to appeal the denial of citizenship “as far up the court ladder as we must climb.”
Should he have been deported, even though he served in the military----or, are you of the mindset: "if you do the crime, you gotta do the time" ("the time" is being deported)?
_________________
White female; age 59; diagnosed Aspie.
I use caps for emphasis----I'm NOT angry or shouting. I use caps like others use italics, underline, or bold.
"What we know is a drop; what we don't know, is an ocean." (Sir Isaac Newton)
07 Apr 2018, 4:11 pm
