and were brought into service for specific purposes -
Trump administration struggles with fate of 900 DREAMers serving in the military
Gregory Korte, Alan Gomez and Kevin Johnson USA TODAY
Published 2:31 p.m. ET Sep. 7, 2017 |
Updated 3:10 p.m. ET Sep. 7, 2017
WASHINGTON — About 900 undocumented immigrants known as "DREAMers" are currently serving in the United States military, the Pentagon says — which could prove a major challenge for the Trump administration as it tries to wind down the Obama-era program that protected those immigrants from deportation. Those service members — all of whom have health care or language skills the U.S. military considers vital — would be forced to leave the military under Trump policy that would rescind their protected status beginning next March.
The enlistees are a small proportion of the 800,000 immigrants who have received quasi-legal status under the program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. But they are also among the most symbolically important faces of the program, now that President Trump has called on Congress to resolve the fate of immigrants whose parents brought them to the country illegally as children.
The DACA enlistees are part of a Pentagon pilot project called Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest. The program waives certain citizenship requirements for green card holders, refugees and DACA recipients with skills that the military considers essential to the national interest. The group includes doctors, nurses, and service members with proficiency in a language considered to be of strategic importance. Spanish is not one of those languages, but Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Korean are.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/07/trump-administration-struggles-fate-900-dreamers-serving-military/640637001/
The SCOTUS upheld keeping DACA and ending military deportations last year (but I expect by then, it was too late for some) -
Supreme Court Ruling Protects DACA Service Members from Deportation
19 Jun 2020
Military.com | By Richard Sisk
Several hundred "Dreamers" in the military received a conditional guarantee from the Supreme Court on Thursday that they could continue serving without fear of deportation by the Trump administration. In the second surprising ruling this week with major implications for the military, the Supreme Court barred the administration from ending protections for about 700,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
The court did not state that the administration was wrong for seeking to end the protections for the Dreamers under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, but rather said that the administration had failed to come up with a rational basis for wanting to do it. In his majority opinion in the 5-4 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies.
"We address only whether the agency [Homeland Security] complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action," he added. Roberts said the administration could try again at a later date to come up with adequate reasons, but the ruling effectively blocks President Donald Trump from fulfilling his campaign promise to end the DACA program, which was put in place by executive order by former President Barack Obama.
Roberts was joined in the majority by the court's more liberal judges -- Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. In February 2018 in an informal session with Pentagon reporters, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that the estimated 800 "Dreamers" then serving were not in danger of deportation, and those who were honorably discharged were also protected. "Right now in terms of the DACA situation -- in other words, our guys on active duty and that sort of thing or in the active delayed enlistment program -- are not in any kind of jeopardy," Mattis said.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/06/19/supreme-court-ruling-protects-daca-service-members-deportation.html
However in general, most of the deportations were for-cause, although a dispute about deporting their families too, seems to be at issue. From the end of the OP source article -
(snip)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported veterans for decades, including when Biden was vice president. The precise number of deportees is unclear because the government failed to screen veterans before deporting them, a 2019 Government Accountability Office report found. Advocacy organizations estimate the government deported hundreds of veterans and thousands of their relatives.
Typically veterans were deported because they were convicted of crimes. Veterans advocates have said that many fell into trouble because of post-traumatic stress disorder related to their military service. But many of their relatives had no criminal records, such as the mother of an Air Force staff sergeant who returned last month.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/biden-deported-veterans-return/2021/07/02/a557285e-db63-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
