Army Team Leader, VA Psychologist Write Letters to ICE to Free Detained Iraq Veteran in Tacoma
Chong Kim, an Army vet who served in Iraq, came to the United States from South Korea at the age of five. Today, he sits in Tacoma's Northwest Detention Center awaiting deportation proceedings.
You can read more about Kim's story—his service, his subsequent struggles with addiction, homelessness, and a conviction for attempted arson—in this Guardian story. But you should also read the letters his Department of Veterans Affairs psychologist, as well as his Army team leader from his tour in Iraq, wrote to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in order to try and free Kim.
After Kim pleaded guilty to attempted arson, he was sentenced to an in-patient substance abuse treatment program at the VA. His past convictions, according to his lawyer, stemmed from these addiction issues. But just two months after Kim successfully completed the program and found employment as a housekeeper at a veterans hospital, ICE launched deportation proceedings against Kim.
"War can change a person, but Mr Kim gave selflessly of himself in order to protect and serve this nation," Kim's former Army team leader, SSG Ryan Henry Kell, wrote. "I ask that you give Mr Kim another chance and let him stay in the country that I know he loves."
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/07/14/25289384/army-team-leader-va-psychologist-write-letters-to-ice-to-free-detained-iraq-veteran-in-tacoma
Iraq veteran facing deportation speaks out from jail: 'I would feel utterly alone'
Chong Kim gathered paperwork demonstrating his recent accomplishments and headed to a federal building in Portland to meet an immigration officer. It was 5 April, and the 41-year-old housekeeper thought he was heading to a routine check-in.
The officer, however, wasn’t interested in his achievements. The Oregon man quickly learned he was facing possible deportation to his native South Korea, a country he left at five years old.
“It frightens me to think about,” said Kim, wearing an orange jail uniform, seated in a small windowless room at a detention center in Tacoma, Washington, one of the country’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities and the site of frequent protests. “How impossible a task would it be to rebuild my life from scratch? I would feel like I’m utterly alone.”
The deportation case, based on an old criminal record, is particularly disturbing to his friends and family given that Kim is an Iraq war veteran who struggled with drug abuse after his deployment, but had recently turned his life around.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/14/iraq-war-veteran-chong-kim-deportation-portland-interview