Purple Heart recipient who served prison sentence deported, lawyer says

An Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient who served 15 years in prison for attempted murder has been deported from the U.S., his lawyer said, marking the latest chapter in a high-profile case that has raised questions over the rights of noncitizen veterans who have committed a crime.

José Barco – who was injured while serving for the U.S. Army in Iraq – was granted parole in January after serving 15 years for an aggravated felony. On his release in Colorado, he was detained by ICE officers and held in detention, slated for deportation under a federal law that allows noncitizens to be stripped of legal residency and removed from the United States if they are convicted of a crime.

On Friday, advocates for Barco said he had been removed from the country from a facility in Arizona. Barco’s lawyer, Kevin T. O’Connor Jr., said ICE has since confirmed Barco has been deported to Nogales, Mexico.

“No additional information regarding his post-removal whereabouts or custodial status has been provided,” he told the Washington Post in an email Saturday, adding that his team was “assessing all legally available avenues for further action.”

A spokesperson for ICE told local media that Barco was released from prison “after serving time for a conviction of attempted murder … and felony menacing with a real or simulated weapon,” adding that he was removed to Nogales on Friday morning. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, previously sent a statement to the Post noting the severity of Barco’s crime and calling him a “heinous criminal.”

The Biden administration issued a 2022 directive making it more difficult for ICE to deport veterans who were not U.S. citizens. However, the Trump administration has undertaken a widespread crackdown on immigration, asking local authorities to provide lists of noncitizen prisoners and detainees in some places, including the crimes they were convicted of and scheduled release dates, while also seeking to expand the capacity of immigration detention centers.

The Trump administration has described “removing criminal illegal aliens” as its “highest priority.” However, rights groups have argued that deporting immigrants after they’ve finished their prison sentence amounts to an “unfair second punishment.”

Ricardo Reyes, executive director of veterans rights organization VetsForward, said he was “outraged” by the deportation, calling it “nothing short of a national disgrace” at a news conference in Arizona. Reyes said Barco was deported at 4 a.m. on Friday and that his family was not immediately notified where he had been sent to.

“We think that those veterans deserve at the very least to be home … after they pay their debt to society to go home and rebuild their lives and be with their families,” he said.

Activist and former Arizona state senator Raquel Terán said in a video on her social media that she’s “heartbroken” about a veteran being deported.

Barco arrived in the U.S. from Venezuela as a political refugee at 4 years old, according to a team of experts advocating on his behalf, and he enlisted in the Army at 17. He completed two tours in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart for lifting a burning vehicle off two soldiers, the team said. He received severe burns and a traumatic brain injury, and he was honorably discharged from the military in 2008, it added.

During his second tour, Barco applied to naturalize as a U.S. citizen, but his application was lost, a U.S. Army officer wrote in a court filing. A second application was being processed in 2008, his lawyer said, when Barco fired a weapon outside a party and injured a pregnant woman. He was convicted the following year.

Advocates for Barco acknowledged the seriousness of his conviction but say he was wrestling with the consequences of a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, and that he had not received adequate support from the military upon his return to civilian life. Barco was released from prison in January after serving 15 years, having been granted parole in Colorado, “ready to begin rebuilding his life with his family,” his team said on a website in support of his cause.

However, he was immediately detained by ICE officials and has since been held in at least six different detention centers, his advocates said. He was put on a plane bound for Venezuela via Honduras in March, but Venezuelan authorities refused to accept him, arguing that his birth certificate did not appear authentic, his team added.

“He has no meaningful ties to Venezuela, no support system there, and a family – a wife and a 15-year-old daughter he has never met outside of prison – waiting for him in the United States,” his team said.

The process of applying for naturalization while serving in the military is complex and unclear, experts and veterans have previously told the Post.

Scott Mechkowski, who spent 30 years in the Army and 22 years in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, said Barco’s case represented a “catastrophic failure” of the system, as he had filed for naturalization before his crime but his application was not processed.