Summary
In a harsh example of Trump’s immigration crackdown, U.S. Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient Jose Barco faces deportation to Venezuela, despite serving in Iraq and suffering severe combat injuries.
After his citizenship application vanished during service and he served prison time for a violent offense linked to untreated trauma, ICE detained him upon release.
Venezuela won’t accept him, leaving him stateless.
Barco’s case spotlights the Trump administration’s punitive policies toward veterans, erosion of due process, and broader threats to constitutional rights under his increasingly authoritarian leadership.
The big issue is that Trump promised his supporters that he would root out the millions of “criminal illegals” in the country who “rig the vote” for Democrats. It turns out, though, that the undocumented people who are here are just as law-abiding as everyone else. (And they don’t vote, because they can’t, and they understand that misrepresenting that is a sure ticket to getting kicked out.)
So in order for Kristi Noem to keep her made-for-TV raids on the air, they need to go after hardened criminals like students, veterans, and gay people. As well as non-citizens who are already in the system (and abiding by the law). There is no plan, other than to harass anyone who looks like they don’t belong, and let them know they are not welcome here.
I always found the stereotype that immigrants commit more crimes counterintuitive. Without looking at the statistics, my instinct would be that they are less likely to commit crime because they don’t want to be deported, and that undocumented immigrants would especially try to avoid drawing any attention to themselves.
when you look at the statistics you’ll find not only do they commit fewer crimes but they have an effect of bringing crime down in neighborhoods they live in
Well, this dude did fire a random shot into a crowd and hit a pregnant teenager. He got out of prison early and was picked up by ICE from there.
Dude has a serious brain injury and PTSD. He should have received the best treatment he could get. He should have received citizenship immediately upon earning his Purple Heart (or fighting for the US in the first place). He should have been afforded a path to a decent life.
He wasn’t. He committed a senseless crime, probably directly as a result of his brain injury and ptsd that he got defending a country he had lived in since he was a toddler.
Even considering his violent act, he spent over a decade in prison and “paid his debt to society”. Of course it isn’t about that. It isn’t about rehabilitation. It’s about punishment, and because he happened to be born a few years before his family brought him here, before he could ever even think about where he wanted to be, he gets to live the rest of his life in misery.
A recipient of a Purple Heart, a war hero. And oh boy, he’s gonna spend the rest of his life paying for that.
Breaks my heart and I wish I could help him in some way.
You’re acting like this wasn’t the intention all along… They laid the groundwork with the claims of criminal immigrants, got the MAGA crowd frothing at the mouth about it, and then started deporting people.
Their supporters just need to hear that “the bad guys are getting deported,” and they celebrate. They don’t know, or really care, that 90% of these people have no criminal record.
More specifically, many don’t know. Many still know and are completely on board with it. This is absolutely what was intended.
Turns out that manufacturing consent in the age of MAGA and Fox News is trivially easy (another intended consequence of decades of propaganda).
It’s hard finding criminals because they are the ones who have a vested interest in being undercover. People who think the law protects them foolishly get jobs and pay taxes.
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