Thread: Army veteran faces possible deportation to Mexico

Army veteran faces possible deportation to Mexico



Sunday, March 05, 2017 08:59AM

CHICAGO --

A deportation hearing was held Monday for an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and may now be deported to Mexico.

Army Private 1st class Miguel Perez, Jr., who was born in Mexico and grew up in Chicago, told an immigration judge that loves the U.S. and gets chills when he hears the Star Spangled banner.

After the 2.5-hour hearing in Chicago, the judge said she would give a written decision in a few weeks.

Perez, 38, was a legal permanent resident when he joined the Army and said he thought he became a legal U.S. citizen when he enlisted. However, that was not the case.

About four years after leaving the military, Perez served prison time for a felony drug offense which sparked the deportation proceedings.

In the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Perez pleaded his case to the judge via a video monitor.

He told the judge that he fears for his life if he is sent back to Mexico.

His attorney, Chris Bergin, said Perez and other veterans who have been sent back to Mexico are targeted.

"Those kind of people are immediately targeted upon entry to Mexico as people who can help criminal gangs, cartels, through their military experience, their weapons training, all that. They are targeted in the sense that, 'You either work for us or we kill you,'" Bergin said.

Perez also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and fears he won't get the appropriate medication in Mexico.

Clinging to a flag that their son gave them, Perez's family spoke after the hearing to reporters.

"I love my son, I need my son, my son is my hero," said his mother Esperanza Perez.



Parents of Miguel Perez Jr., a veteran facing deportation, spoke to the public on Feb. 5. 2017.

http://abc13.com/news/army-veteran-f...exico/1785723/

Send him home! We don't need people in America and the US military that then go out and commit felonies as drug smugglers / producers / dealers.

W

If he'd just quietly gone back to Mexico, no one in Mexico would know he's an ex-Veteran. Now that he's advertised that fact on global media, he may be a target but only because of his own choices and advertisements.

The idea of illegals - or 'legal residents' in our military frightens me.

I realize there have been foreign aliens in our military for a long time. It's just that things are much different now. It's a different atmosphere.

Also, in the past foreigners joined the military were given citizenship after their service.
Why wasn't he?

Are his parents legal? If not, send them back to be with their son.

Adolph Hitler was never a German citizen, he was Austrian. Before WWI, this was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He came into Germany by way of military service to Germany in WWI. Before Chamberlain's betrayal of Czechoslovakia, there was the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany by Adolph Hitler and the Nazis when they came to power. Nobody noticed and nobody cares about this history to this day.

Really, who annexed who?

I never knew that, pkskyali! Wow. No one knows this, but a few intellectuals like you. This should be taught so people know. He was an immigrant who somehow got in the German Army and then took over all of Europe.

Beware my fellow Americans. History has a tendency to repeat itself if we didn't learn from it the first time around to avoid the same bad outcomes a second time.

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

Send him home! We don't need people in America and the US military that then go out and commit felonies as drug smugglers / producers / dealers.

W

He is the perfect candidate that is in-line for deportation as outlined in the Trump Executive Order.

I don't know about others, but we were taught that about Hitler.

Of course, I went to school in the 'long ago' = 40's and 50's.

It has long concerned me when I hear so many foreigners were in our military. When, not if, our government decides to turn the military on us, I would rather have the military not be made up of foreigners.

I'm not sure that isn't part of the goal of letting them enlist.

I can't find a link, but I remember Pres. Bush bestowing citizenship on a huge number of illegals in the military.

Originally Posted by nntrixie

Also, in the past foreigners joined the military were given citizenship after their service.
Why wasn't he?

As I recall from other news reports he was eligible to become a citizen due to his military service but never realized that it wasn't automatic. He had to apply for it.

nntrixie wrote (excerpt):

I can't find a link, but I remember Pres. Bush bestowing citizenship on a huge number of illegals in the military.

Hopefully someone can find the link. I'd like to see it. If you're talking specifically about DACA illegals, I do remember Obama signing a directive authorizing them to join. And if I remember correctly, around 80 or so of them did earn citizenship doing so. This happened around a year or two ago.

To my knowledge, illegals were not allowed to join the military prior to the Obama administration. I'm not saying a few didn't crook their way in, just saying recruiters were not authorized to recruit them and the military was not authorized to swear them in.