Written by Spring 2026 M-VETS Student Advisor, Yonatan Shoshan.
I. Introduction: A Promise Deferred
The United States has enlisted non-citizens into its armed forces since the Revolutionary War. Today, federal law not only allows lawful permanent residents to join but also provides them with an expedited path to citizenship as a benefit of their service.[1] Congress codified that promise into law, and multiple presidents have invoked it through executive orders. Yet as of 2025, that promise still has a wide enough gap to deport a Purple Heart recipient.
About 115,000 non-citizen veterans currently live in the United States, individuals who served honorably, in some cases in combat, but who never completed the naturalization process.[2] Many did not know they were required to file separate paperwork after serving. Some filed and had applications lost by the very bureaucracy that was supposed to process them. Others were discharged before USCIS could schedule their oath ceremony. The current administration uses that gap in citizenship status as the legal basis for detention and removal. This applies even to veterans with decades of ties to the United States, even to those wounded in combat, and those who lost their naturalization applications through no fault of their own.
This blog post examines the legal framework that governs non-citizen veterans in immigration proceedings, the enforcement shift that has placed them at acute risk, the key cases that illustrate the human and legal stakes, and the legislative response that remains stalled in Congress.
II. The Statutory Framework: A Pathway That Requires Navigation
Congress has long recognized that military service is a compelling basis for naturalization. Section 329 of the Immigration and Nationality Act — codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1440 — allows non-citizens who serve honorably in active-duty status during a designated period of hostilities to apply for naturalization without satisfying the usual requirements as to age, residence, physical presence, and court jurisdiction.[3] Since September 11, 2001, all such services have been covered by executive order.[4]
Importantly, § 1440 waives 8 U.S.C. § 1429, which would otherwise prohibit naturalization while a final order of removal is pending.[5] This means that a non-citizen veteran who has already begun removal proceedings is not automatically foreclosed from naturalizing, but the statutory window is perilously narrow in practice. Naturalization applications require processing time; removal proceedings move on their own clock; and an individual detained by ICE may not have meaningful access to counsel or USCIS.
The critical flaw in the framework is that § 1440 creates an opportunity for naturalization, not an entitlement. The statute does not prevent deportation. Military service is not, by itself, a legal defense to removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Unlike a criminal defendant who has served their sentence and is presumptively free, a non-citizen veteran who has served their country remains subject to all grounds of removal available under 8 U.S.C. § 1227.[6] The law provides a path to citizenship; it does not guarantee that the path will be walked in time.
III. The Policy Shift: From Discretion to Enforcement
For years, enforcement discretion operated as a practical safeguard for non-citizen veterans. During the Biden administration, ICE agents were directed to consider military service records before initiating removal proceedings and to exercise caution when the individual was eligible for naturalization, absent “significant aggravating factors.”[7]
The Trump administration rescinded that guidance within days of its inauguration in January 2025. In its place, a DHS enforcement memorandum emphasized that military service does not “automatically exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”[8] The legal statement is technically accurate. The operational consequence has been severe: non-citizen veterans who had been living in the United States for decades — some under written assurances from DHS that their cases were closed — found themselves detained with little warning and placed in removal proceedings.
This is not a story about criminals. It is a story about bureaucratic failure and the absence of a legal backstop. ICE does not routinely report on the veteran status of individuals it detains or deports, meaning the full scope of the problem remains invisible.[9] Advocacy organizations estimate that over 10,000 veterans may have been deported between January and June 2025 alone — a figure cited in a congressional letter to the Secretary of Defense — but confirmed numbers remain elusive simply because the government does not track them.[10]
IV. The Cases: What the Legal Gap Looks Like in Practice
a. José Barco: The Lost Application
José Barco enlisted in the U.S. Army at age seventeen, deployed twice to Iraq, and earned a Purple Heart after an IED explosion left him with third-degree burns and a traumatic brain injury.[11] His commanding officer confirmed in a 2025 court filing that Barco had submitted a citizenship application after his second tour and that USCIS subsequently lost the packet.[12] He was discharged in 2008 without having been naturalized.
After a subsequent criminal conviction, Barco served fifteen years in Colorado state prison. On January 21, 2025, one day after the inauguration, he walked out of prison and was immediately apprehended by ICE agents who had been waiting for him.[13] He spent months in detention, was transferred between at least six facilities, and was eventually deported to Mexico on November 14, 2025, a country he had never visited and to which he had no ties.[14]
Barco’s case presents the starkest version of the legal failure: the government lost his naturalization paperwork, never corrected the error, and then deported him twenty years later for lacking the citizenship he had tried to gain. His attorneys argued that his deportation should be deferred under the Convention Against Torture, given his combat background and the risk of harm in Venezuela or Cuba, but those arguments were ultimately unsuccessful.[15]
b. Marlon Parris: The Rescinded Assurance
Army veteran Marlon Parris served two tours in Iraq. Following his service, DHS sent him a letter explicitly stating that it was not pursuing deportation proceedings against him. Two days after President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Parris was surrounded by unmarked vehicles and taken into ICE custody. [16] His family reported that they still had no explanation for why, after years of operating on the assumption that his case was closed, he was swept up in enforcement.[17]
Parris’s case illustrates a distinct legal problem: reliance on an interest created by government assurances. While informal agency guidance is not legally binding in how a formal grant of deferred action might be, there is a serious due process question when individuals change their conduct — as Parris apparently did, making no effort to seek formal legal status because he believed he was protected — in direct reliance on official government representations.
c. Godfrey Wade: The Stale Hearing Notice
Godfrey Wade, a sixty-five-year-old Army veteran, had lived in the United States for fifty-two years and raised six children here.[18] He was detained following a traffic stop that revealed he lacked documentation of his immigration status. He was told his situation was “final” without ever seeing an immigration judge. A hearing notice from 2014 had been sent to the wrong address and returned undelivered, meaning Wade had no opportunity to appear, and the order of removal was entered in absentia.[19]
Wade’s case raises the habeas corpus question most directly. Where an individual has no meaningful access to the judicial process — where a removal order entered in absentia becomes the operative legal instrument — the writ of habeas corpus may be the only available relief. Federal courts have, in at least one case, granted habeas relief to a disabled veteran detained by ICE, finding the detention unlawful while the underlying immigration proceedings continued.[20] The availability and scope of habeas review in this context remain unsettled, but it represents a critical tool for practitioners representing detained veterans.
V. The Legislative Response: Stalled But Important
Senator Tammy Duckworth has repeatedly introduced legislation to address this legal gap. Ahead of Veterans Day 2025, she reintroduced a package of three bills: the Veterans Visa and Protection Act of 2025, the Healthcare Opportunities for Patriots in Exile (HOPE) Act, and the Immigrant Veterans Eligibility Tracking System (I-VETS) Act.[21]
The centerpiece, S. 3144, would prohibit the removal of any non-citizen veteran who has not been convicted of a “crime of violence” as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 16(a).[22] That framing is legally significant: it would supersede § 237 of the INA as applied to veterans with non-violent criminal histories — including veterans like Barco, whose conviction, whatever else might be said about it, did not meet the § 16(a) definition. The bill would also establish a visa program allowing deported veterans to return as lawful permanent residents, restore any military and veteran’s benefits they had before deportation, and create a pathway to naturalization.[23]
The companion HOPE Act would allow non-violent deported veterans to temporarily re-enter the United States to receive VA medical care — addressing the perverse consequence that veterans earn VA benefits through their service but lose access to those benefits the moment they are removed from the country.[24]
The I-VETS Act would require DHS to identify and track non-citizens with military service when they apply for immigration benefits or are placed in immigration enforcement proceedings — closing the data gap that currently allows the government to deport veterans without knowing or recording their status.[25] These bills have not advanced. Democratic co-sponsors supported them entirely; as of this post, no Republican senators have signed on.[26] The legislation’s prospects in the current Congress are uncertain, making the legal gap it closes even more consequential.
VI. What Practitioners Can Do Now
The absence of statutory protection does not leave practitioners without tools. Several arguments and mechanisms remain available for active removal proceedings involving veterans.
Habeas Corpus is perhaps the most important thing. Where a detained veteran has a colorable claim that their detention is unlawful — for example, because they were entitled to naturalization and the government’s processing failures prevented it, or because a removal order was entered without adequate notice — a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 is appropriate. Wade’s legal team pursued this avenue after his deportation, seeking to reopen his underlying criminal cases because he did not understand the immigration consequences of his plea agreement.
Convention Against Torture (CAT) relief may be available where deportation would expose the veteran to a particularized risk of torture — especially for veterans who served in intelligence or combat roles and whose backgrounds may make them targets in the countries to which they are being removed. Barco’s attorneys raised this argument, grounded in his military service and his family’s dissident history in Cuba and Venezuela. While the argument did not ultimately succeed in that case, it is fact-specific and should be evaluated in each case.
The lost-paperwork argument deserves more systematic development. Where a veteran’s naturalization application was filed, acknowledged, and then lost by USCIS — and where the commanding officer can certify that fact — there is an equitable argument that the veteran should not be removable on the basis of a citizenship status that the government failed to process. This is not currently a recognized doctrine, but it presents a compelling case for mandamus relief directing USCIS to adjudicate the lost application, or for relief before the immigration court as a matter of discretionary relief under 8 U.S.C. § 1229b (cancellation of removal), for which military service is a relevant equitable consideration.
Congressional notification and advocacy can also matter. Several veterans’ cases have been stayed or reviewed following a congressional inquiry. Practitioners should consider whether to request intervention by the relevant U.S. Senator or Representative, particularly in cases involving combat-wounded veterans or veterans with documented PTSD.
VII. Conclusion
The legal framework governing non-citizen veterans in immigration proceedings contains a gap that the current enforcement environment has transformed into a crisis. Congress created an expedited path to citizenship for those willing to serve in uniform during wartime. It did not create protection against deportation for those who served but did not complete the naturalization process. That distinction — legally sound in the abstract — produces outcomes that are difficult to reconcile with any coherent account of what the nation owes those who bled for it.
The cases of Barco, Parris, and Wade are not edge cases. They are illustrative of a systemic pattern: non-citizens who enlisted under the reasonable belief that service would lead to citizenship, who encountered bureaucratic obstacles they had no power to overcome, and who are now subject to removal from the only country they have known as adults. For practitioners, the challenge is twofold: litigating individual cases with the tools currently available and supporting the legislative reform that alone can close the underlying gap.
[1] 8 U.S.C. § 1440 (2018); see also Exec. Order No. 13,269, 67 Fed. Reg. 45,287 (Jul. 3, 2002) (designating the period beginning September 11, 2001, as a period of hostilities triggering expedited naturalization eligibility) [https://perma.cc/V9P8-LXHP].
[2] Cong. Research Serv., Naturalization Through Military Service: Who Is Eligible? (2024) [https://perma.cc/X6PM-QCSQ].
[3] See 8 U.S.C. § 1440(a); supra note 1.
[4] See Exec. Order No. 13,269; supra note 1.
[5] See 8 U.S.C. § 1440(a) (2018); supra note 1; cf. 8 U.S.C. § 1429 (2018).
[6] See 8 U.S.C. § 1227 (2018).
[7] See DHS, Guidelines for Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas (Oct. 12, 2021); see also DHS, Interim Guidance: Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Priorities (Jan. 20, 2021), as described in Gloria Rebecca Gomez, Purple Heart Iraq Veteran Deported to Unknown Location, Ariz. Mirror (Nov. 15, 2025), [https://azmirror.com/briefs/purple-heart-iraq-veteran-deported-to-unknown-location/].
[8] See DHS, Enforcement and Removal Operations: Civil Immigration Enforcement Actions (Jan. 20, 2025); as described in Gomez, supra note 7.
[9] See U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO-19-416, Noncitizen Servicemembers: Additional Actions Needed to Reduce Barriers and Ensure Equal Treatment 36–38 (2019) [https://perma.cc/EP2L-2D5G].
[10] See Letter from Rep. Yassamin Ansari et al. to Sec’y Pete Hegseth, Sec’y Doug Collins & Sec’y Kristi Noem (Jun. 24, 2025), [https://ansari.house.gov/imo/media/doc/veteran_deportations_letter.pdf] (“Some estimates state that the number of deported veterans is over 10,000 individuals or even higher.”); see also News21, Mass Deportations Ensnare Immigrant Service Members, Veterans, Military Times (Sept. 18, 2025), [https://perma.cc/E8H6-WGA5] (noting that there is no publicly available data on how many veterans are being affected, and that ICE does not routinely track or report the veteran status of deported individuals).
[11] See Rae Ellen Bichell, He’s a Decorated War Vet But a Convicted Criminal. ICE Wants to Deport Him, NPR (Apr. 4, 2025), [https://perma.cc/JFN5-LCF9].
[12] See Anna Mulrine Grobe & Whitney Eulich, Should a War Hero Be Deported? The Complex Dilemma Around One Convicted Vet, Christian Sci. Monitor (Nov. 9, 2025), [https://perma.cc/P9EA-Q4N8] (describing retired Lt. Col. Michael Hutchinson’s account of Barco’s citizenship application and the lost paperwork); see also Bichell, supra note 11 (quoting Hutchinson’s February 2025 memo for immigration officials stating that Barco’s naturalization packet “was lost”).
[13] See Kyle Cooke, José Barco, An Army Veteran Detained by ICE, Deported to Mexico, Rocky Mountain PBS, Nov. 19, 2025 [https://perma.cc/QNA9-U99T].
[14] Id.
[15] See Gomez, supra note 7; see also Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, art. 3, Dec. 10, 1984, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85; 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c).
[16] See Gloria Rebecca Gomez, Veterans Condemn Deportations of Immigrant Service Members Under Trump, Ariz. Mirror (Nov. 20, 2025), https://azmirror.com/2025/11/20/veterans-condemn-deportations-of-immigrant-service-members-under-trump/.
[17] Id.
[18] See Levins et al., supra note 10; see also Lauren Lantry, Georgia Army Veteran Stuck in ICE Detention Center, Military.com (Dec. 19, 2025) [https://perma.cc/N8VJ-6JF5].
[19] See Patricia Murphy et al., Georgia Army Veteran Deported While Appeal Pending, 11Alive News (Feb. 6, 2026) [https://perma.cc/4NB7-UHK2].
[20] See GAO-19-416, supra note 9; see also 28 U.S.C. § 2241.
[21] See Press Release, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Duckworth Renews Push to Help Protect Servicemembers and Veterans from Deportation (Nov. 10, 2025) [https://perma.cc/2SXH-PFMU].
[22] See Veterans Visa and Protection Act of 2025, S. 3144, 119th Cong. § 4 (2025); see also 18 U.S.C. § 16(a).
[23] See S. 3144 §§ 3, 5, 6; supra note 22.
[24] See Healthcare Opportunities for Patriots in Exile (HOPE) Act of 2025, S. 3145, 119th Cong. (2025); see also 38 U.S.C. § 1710; see also Press Release, Sen. Duckworth, supra note 21.
[25] See Immigrant Veterans Eligibility Tracking System (I-VETS) Act of 2025, S. 3146, 119th Cong. (2025); see also GAO-19-416, supra note 9, at 36–38; Linda F. Hersey, Democratic Senators Back Bills to Halt Deportations of Immigrant Veterans, Stars & Stripes (Nov. 18, 2025) [https://perma.cc/4UAU-T3CM].
[26] See S. 3144, Co-Sponsors List, Congress.gov (listing only Democratic co-sponsors: Gallego, Blumenthal, Wyden, Rosen, Hirono, Kim) (last visited Apr. 4, 2026).