Military Veteran Faces Deportation to Mexico
By Debbie Gregory.
By Debbie Gregory.
In 2014, U.S. Navy veteran Joaquin Antonio Sotelo Tarin pleaded guilty to several felonies, including a domestic violence charge.
Tarin, like many other veterans, said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse upon returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He took responsibility for his past crimes and has been receiving help, completing his court-ordered rehabilitation and living within the law.
But after serving around a year-and-a-half in prison, Tarin was picked up by ICE agents immediately upon his release. He was then detained in a federal immigration facility for another year-and-a-half before being bonded out in January 2017.
Now facing possible confinement in an immigration facility or deportation to Mexico, a country he left as an 8-year-old, Tarin has asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein to intervene on his behalf, ahead of his Feb. 12 surrender to a Fresno, California, ICE office.
Tarin has turned his life around and now serves as an advocate for the veteran services he once sorely needed. He is family focused and is married with four children, between the ages of eight months to 11 years old.
Tarin is also fighting a separate battle, to have his criminal conviction overturned, saying he received poor legal representation and was not told that a felony conviction could lead to his deportation prior to accepting a plea deal.
Unfortunately, there are limited options for an immigrant military veteran who’s been deported following a felony conviction. Usually, returning to the U.S. is not an option. And options in Mexico are also severely limited, as jobs are scarce and crime is on the rise.
A very real worry is that these deported veterans have valuable skill sets that they honed through military service, these veterans then run the risk of being forced into service by the drug cartels, locking them into a criminal lifestyle they would not voluntarily choose.
While the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t keep track of how many U.S. veterans have been deported, estimates put the number in the thousands.
According to a 2016 report by the American Civil Liberties Union entitled “Discharged, Then Discarded,” the federal government’s failure to help naturalize immigrants serving in the U.S. military has led to the large number of deportations, all of whom were entitled to become citizens because of their service.
The hope is that that we can influence positive change in available options for these veterans.
Veteran and Military Business Owners Association, VAMBOA,
