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Banished: Deported Veterans Struggle to Survive in Mexico

May 08, 2016 (1 min read)

Jeremy Schwartz, Austin American-Statesman, May 6, 2016 - "Forty-four years after he volunteered for the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, Torres is among an untold number of U.S. military veterans who’ve been deported to Mexico over the past decade after arrests or prison sentences. In cities and towns up and down the Mexico-Texas border, former soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines, who fought in conflicts from Southeast Asia to Iraq, try to make a living in the midst of a grinding drug war. Nearly all the deported veterans in Mexico were legal residents of the United States who, for a variety of reasons, failed to finish the naturalization process and then were convicted of crimes after they got out of the service. Immigration experts and lawyers say the number of veteran deportations has increased in recent years, as veterans have been caught in the same dragnet that has led to the removal of record numbers of convicted criminals who were staying in the U.S. without legal permission."