Civil and Immigrants’ Rights Organizations Urge Federal Clemency for Military Veterans Vulnerable to Deportation
WASHINGTON — Organizations representing noncitizen military veterans whose federal criminal convictions make them vulnerable to deportation are urging President Biden to use his pardon power to ensure people who have served our nation are not exiled from the only country they have ever known as home.
In a letter sent to Elizabeth Oyer, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, the American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and partners highlight the critical service noncitizen veterans have provided to our country for centuries, the immigration consequences of criminal convictions for noncitizen veterans, and how presidential pardons will keep families together.
“Many veterans face challenges reintegrating into civilian life after military service and wind up entangled in the criminal legal system. But instead of being provided rehabilitation and care — many return home with physical injuries or mental health diagnoses — noncitizen veterans face a second punishment for their criminal conviction: permanent removal from the nation they swore to protect. This is cruel and unjust, but with the stroke of a pen, President Biden can make sure these people can remain in the country they call home,” said Jennie Pasquarella, immigrants’ rights director at the ACLU of Southern California.
One in three veterans have been arrested or jailed at least once, often for crimes stemming directly from traumatic experiences related to their military service. For noncitizen veterans, many criminal convictions — including for nonviolent and misdemeanor crimes — can result in the mandatory deportation for lawful permanent residents and lifetime bars to reentry and naturalization. For the vast majority of noncitizen veterans who came to the country as small children, deportation means being sent to a country where they may have never visited, have no family or support system, and may not even know the language.
Jose Francisco Lopez, for example, is a 79-year-old veteran who immigrated to the United States as a child with his family to Wichita Falls, Texas. When he was 23 years old, he was drafted and served honorably in the Vietnam War, earning the Vietnam Service Medal with four bronze service stars. Like many veterans who experience the trauma of war, he returned to civilian life facing addiction and was eventually arrested for a drug related crime in 1994. He was rehabilitated in prison, but was deported to Mexico in 2003 following his release, separating him from his five U.S.-citizen children.
Under the Biden administration’s Immigrant Military Members and Veterans Initiative (IMMVI), Lopez was repatriated to the United States in 2023. More than 85 others have been returned to the U.S. under the initiative. The White House invited Lopez to a Nov. 11, 2023 Veterans Day event with President Biden, and a federal pardon would make Lopez eligible to naturalize based on his military service.
“All I want now is to be buried on U.S. soil as an American citizen. The person I was 30 years ago is not the person I am now. That person was addicted to drugs to cope with the trauma of Vietnam; the person I am today has been sober for decades and is devoted to serving veterans in need. I ask only for forgiveness from President Biden, so that I may live my remaining days as a U.S. citizen,” said Jose Francisco Lopez, who founded and runs the Deported Veterans Support House in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The letter urges the Biden administration to adopt a process for pardoning noncitizen veterans, including people repatriated to the U.S. under the IMMVI and others facing removal or barriers to naturalization due to a federal conviction. “For these individuals, deportation — permanent banishment from the United States — is a uniquely harsh and disproportionately unjust outcome that can and should be waived through the President’s pardon authority, as Congress intended,” the letter reads.
“Clemency is a powerful tool to correct injustices - it can offer people second chances and their freedom, but it can also do so much more. It can provide justice for people who have served in our military and have since been deported. Our Constitution gives the president clear authority to forgive past and current offenses, and President Biden must remedy this injustice now,” said Tara Stutsman, senior campaign strategist with the ACLU’s Redemption Campaign.
“Congress intended executive pardons to be the safety valve to prevent unjust deportations otherwise mandated by our immigration laws. Veterans, whether citizens or noncitizens, should reunite with their families and communities upon completion of their service–not permanently banished from all they know and love. President Biden can and should correct this injustice by pardoning these veterans, so that they may remain permanently in the United States with their families,” said Amanda Schuft, legal services director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
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ACLU FOIA Litigation Reveals New Information Regarding ICE’s Plans to Expand Immigration Detention in New JerseyACLU FOIA Litigation Reveals New Information Regarding ICE’s Plans to Expand Immigration Detention in New Jersey
NEW YORK – New documents obtained by the ACLU reveal that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is actively considering proposals to expand its immigration detention capacity across the state of New Jersey. The records, obtained as a result of a FOIA lawsuit filed by the ACLU in September 2024, disclose that ICE capacity could increase by approximately 600 beds in at least two facilities in New Jersey. The discovery comes as President-elect Donald Trump continues to double down on his campaign promise to implement the largest mass deportation and detention program in the nation’s history. For months, the ACLU of New Jersey and advocates have raised concerns with the Biden administration’s plans to expand detention in New Jersey, as well as in potentially sixteen other states identified by ICE. “Instead of closing abusive detention facilities once and for all, the Biden administration is simply paving the way for the incoming Trump administration to conduct mass detention and deportation of immigrant communities nationwide,” said Eunice Cho, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “The Biden administration must instead work to close these facilities now.” These facilities under consideration include the Elizabeth Detention Center, located in Elizabeth, New Jersey and owned and operated by CoreCivic, Inc., and the Albert M. “Bo” Robinson Center (ARC) in Trenton, New Jersey, which was formerly owned by the GEO Group, Inc. Both facilities have significant records of poor conditions. Investigations of conditions at ARC exposed abusive conditions including “robbery, sexual assault, [and] menacing of the weak.” Meanwhile, the Elizabeth Detention Center has also come under fire for consistent medical neglect, cramped and unsanitary living quarters, and abusive treatment from guards. The ACLU obtained these documents as a result of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, which sought in part records responsive to a contract solicitation for additional ICE detention space in the Newark, New Jersey area. The solicitation, originally issued on June 26, 2024, sought “comprehensive detention services for adult male and female noncitizens” to “provide for general population, intake, segregated housing, and medical beds at a contractor-owned/contractor-operated detention facility or facilities.” The documents provided by ICE provide a limited glimpse of the detention proposals, as the production appears to include only the environmental impact statement portions of the proposals submitted by CoreCivic, Inc. and GEO Group, Inc. to ICE. It is unclear from the documents whether there are additional New Jersey facilities that responded to ICE’s solicitation, or how much it would cost taxpayers. For example, the GEO Group, Inc. claimed in litigation earlier this year that it has readied the Delaney Hall Facility, located in Newark, New Jersey, to conform with ICE operating requirements. “New Jersey has already taken steps to oppose immigrant detention by phasing out ICE contracts and closing county-run ICE jails. But as federal plans to expand detention in New Jersey continue, the need for protections grows by the day. That’s why it’s imperative that the Biden administration immediately halt any efforts to expand this abusive detention machine,” said ACLU-NJ campaign strategist Ami Kachalia. “We also urge the New Jersey Legislature to quickly pass the Immigrant Trust Act so that New Jersey is not complicit in separating families or depriving our residents of due process.” State officials and members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation have opposed the expansion of ICE detention in the state. Earlier this year, eight Representatives and Senator Cory Booker raised concern regarding the development of additional private ICE detention facilities in the state. Prior to that, the New Jersey state legislature passed AB 5207 in 2021, which prohibited state and local entities and private detention facilities from entering, renewing, or expanding immigration detention contracts. Both CoreCivic, Inc., and GEO Group, Inc. filed suit to stop enforcement of the law, which has been enjoined pending appeal. The ACLU of New Jersey filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of 28 community organizations in support of New Jersey's anti-detention law. The FOIA records are available here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/foia-documents-re-nj-ice-detention-rfi