July 10, 2017
In this searing exposé, journalist Garcia (What Wars Leave Behind) tells the stories of noncitizen U.S. military veterans deported by the very country for which they were willing to lay down their lives. Speaking to the veterans themselves and to their families, Garcia illustrates the injustice in human terms. There’s Neuris Feliz, born in the Dominican Republic and sent to Iraq as a member of the National Guard in 2004, who drank heavily after his return to escape his memories of combat and, after being arrested for assault, was eventually deported. Then there is Manuel De Jesus Castano, an Army vet who died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in his native Mexico. Story after story makes it plain that the U.S. immigration system has little mercy for people made doubly vulnerable by their lack of citizenship and the often grisly tours of duty they served. Though there are occasional bright spots, these are few and far between. “Only a cognitive disconnect could allow us to put people in uniform and not treat them as our own,” the author declares. Few readers will disagree by the book’s end. Garcia’s timely work of reportage shines a light on the harsh treatment being shown to a group of American servicepeople.
July 1, 2017
The sagas of noncitizens who managed to enlist in the U.S. military and serve in uniform but nonetheless ended up deported to their countries of birth because they were charged with crimes.Studs Terkel Prize winner Garcia (What Wars Leave Behind: The Faceless and the Forgotten, 2014) had logically assumed that all members of the military qualified as U.S. citizens and therefore could never be deported to places such as Mexico or the Dominican Republic. But when the author began investigating a story about homeless veterans scattered throughout the country, he learned from a social worker about discharged veterans being deported by the American government. Garcia began his research in Tijuana, Mexico, following Hector Barajas-Varela, an Army veteran who created a gathering place nicknamed the Bunker about a decade ago after U.S. authorities deported him to Mexico due to crimes committed on American soil. Throughout the book, Garcia expresses outrage about the deportations of veterans. The outrage is leavened, however, by his openly stated ambivalence about the crimes committed by the deported veterans, which often caused pain to innocent parties. The author does emphasize that those veterans who served prison time in the U.S. should not be doubly punished via deportation. Garcia makes himself a character in the book, narrating first-person accounts of his travels to locate the veterans in Mexico and other locales outside the U.S. Unfortunately, the author relates the details of the case studies in prose that is often rambling and filled with irrelevant details. In addition, the structure of the book is so loose that the narrative throughline sometimes gets lost. Despite the mediocre presentation, Garcia documents an underreported phenomenon that is likely to upset readers who believe honorable service in the U.S. military should be rewarded with citizenship.
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