Immigrant Soldiers Serve Country, Still Face Deportation

Even though these people are accused of crimes, they should go through the legal system, not be deported to countries some of them left as small children. - - Donna Poisl

by Julianne Hing

It jars the mind: immigrants who put their lives on the line, served in wars from Korea to Kosovo, and are being rewarded for their service by being deported from the United States. How can it be? And yet, many are.

The AP’s Juliana Barbassa reports that an estimated 4,000 immigrant veterans are facing deportation or have already been deported because of criminal convictions. Barbassa profiles Rohan Coombs, a 43-year-old Jamaican-born U.S. Marine who fell on hard times after he came back from serving in the Persian Gulf in the first Iraq war. Coombs was convicted of selling pot to an undercover cop in 2008, when he was working as a bouncer outside a club. He’s facing deportation now to a country he left when he was a child.
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