Soldiers worry illegal relatives will be deported

updated 7:03 p.m. ET Aug. 10, 2007

Yaderlin Jimenez was an illegal immigrant facing deportation. Her husband, a U.S. citizen and soldier, couldn’t help her because he was missing after an insurgent attack in Iraq.

Army Spc. Alex Jimenez of Lawrence, Mass., disappeared in May after he was apparently snatched in a raid on his unit south of Baghdad. His capture drew national attention to his wife’s deportation case, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asked immigration officials to halt the proceedings. His wife then became a legal resident.

But the couple’s plight put a public face on the private anguish of a growing number of military families in similar straits.

About 35,000 legal immigrants without citizenship are now serving in the military, and nearly 34,000 other service members have taken the citizenship oath since 2001. That means when immigrant soldiers ship off to Iraq, they may carry with them a worry their American-born counterparts are less likely to share: that their family members might be deported while they are away.

“Every base has immigration problems,” said Margaret Stock, an Army reservist and immigration attorney teaching at the United States Military Academy at West Point. “The government they’re fighting for is the same government that’s trying to deport their families.”

Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Eduardo Gonzalez is a citizen whose wife entered the country illegally from Guatemala when she was 5 years old. Now a young adult, she is in deportation proceedings.

“If I’m willing to die for the United States, why can’t I just be allowed to be with my family?” Gonzalez asked.

'Important for morale'
Supporters of tighter immigration controls say giving the relatives of service members a free pass would only create an incentive for immigrants to enlist to legalize undocumented family members. They also oppose narrow solutions addressed at individual cases like that of Yaderlin Jimenez.

The Pentagon has long recognized that military life can be a strain on service members’ families, and that ensuring their well-being is a crucial part of maintaining troop morale. But troops’ families do not enjoy any special treatment when it comes to immigration infractions, Stock said.

“We give relief to soldiers from everything else — from oppressive loans, from a landlord that’s trying to evict them while they’re deployed,” Stock said. “Someone at the top needs to decide which is most important — to keep soldiers’ families together, because we know it’s important for morale, or break them up in the interest of enforcing immigration law.”

The federal government encourages immigrants to enlist by streamlining their citizenship applications, eliminating fees and making it easier for them to file paperwork while serving abroad. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also postponed deportation of immigrants on active duty until they are discharged.

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