3d ago

U.S. Army Purple Heart veteran forced to self-deport from Hawaii

www.hawaiinewsnow.com

United States | News & Politics @midwest.social

Davriellelouna @lemmy.world

3d ago

U.S. Army Purple Heart veteran forced to self-deport from Hawaii

www.hawaiinewsnow.com /2025/06/24/us-army-purple-heart-veteran-forced-self-deport-hawaii/

63 comments

Even the Roman empire had a pathway for foreigners to become citizens by military service.
The sacks of shit are deporting a combat veteran. WTF.
- no hates the military more than trump, and his fathers, and his fathers father.
As much as I hate the US military and anyone involved with it for supporting the murdering of brown people all across the world, it still sucks to see the modern day Gestapo do this shit to people.
I hate the euphemism of "self-deport."
Let's call it what it really is: ICE threatened to lock him up and send him to an undisclosed location if he didn't flee the country.
- Forced to self-deport? So... Deported. It's redundant.
“I get it. I broke the law and everything, but I think this is a little severe what they’re doing to me after I paid my dues after I did my time for the offense that I did,” he said.
Okay. So he gets shot twice serving the U.S. The military doesn’t give him support for his PTSD, and he turns to drugs. He gets addicted, fights with that for over a decade before they throw him in jail because there isn’t a fucking social program to help addicts in this country, not even veteran addicts, gets clean in jail, turns his life around, and spends the next 16 years complying with the restrictions placed on him due to losing his green card because of his nonviolent conviction.
So even though he apparently is one of the few people who was rehabilitated by going to prison, he was treated as if he was a criminal for the rest of his time, even though he’s been clean longer than he was an addict. So I guess the state doesn’t believe that prisons rehabilitate people. (I don’t believe they do, but it’s clear the state doesn’t either.)
And finally, this man has a non-violent conviction. Trump has done more violent crime than him. But I guess it doesn’t count if you pay off your victims and make them sign an NDA, so the media has to say “allegedly” every time they talk about all the people you’ve raped. Trump should be deported to the nearest place that’ll take him.
- Trump called us veterans (especially us disabled veterans) stickers and losers, so there's that.
  Fuck him
- No one deserves that clown. The American people need to deal with him.
  
  There are some Middle Eastern countries that would be ecstatic to host him for a short time.
  
  I mean. That’s fair. I would accept a desolate island or wherever they dropped off Bin Laden.
What's really heartbreaking is that when these veterans, who took bullets for us, get told by our country that they need to leave, they just say "Yup, I guess I gotta leave", and don't make a huge deal about it. Donald Trump whines, in an extremely public matter, whenever he doesn't get his way, and these people just continue to do what their country asks them to, even when the country tells them to leave.
Life just isn't fair.
- trump has always hated military service members.
- We have to shout for him, there's nothing he can do. You know, "First they came for..." and all that.
  
  We have to shout for him
  We can't.
  The people who need to hear it are in another bubble and never will.
  TBH I dunno how to fix it anymore. Even 'revolution' like many on Lemmy fantasize about will not penetrate, and most people don't want to understand what propaganda and algos are doing to them.
- No offense to Americans, I understand some of you are great people, but I wouldn't need much of a reason to leave America at this point. If not for my safety, then for my sanity. If not for my sanity, then for eggs.
  
  Reason, sure. Ability? That's something else. Most of us don't have enough money to make the journey. I don't know of many places that would even accept us as immigrants without a substantial monetary value/donation or work skill, plus the language skills we don't have because schools don't teach foreign languages well or at all.
  Who would even have us all?
  
  Yeah, well... Got room for 60 million immigrants?
  
  If I could easily emigrate to a country that didn't suck, I would.
A honorable discharge DD-214 should come with naturalized citizenship papers automatically.
- It used to...
  
  AFAIK, it is a faster means to obtain naturalized citizenship and always has been. You have to have a green card when you join and you get fasttracked after a year of honorable service.
  I may be wrong, but that is what some people I know said that was their plan and I know my former boss got his citizenship after playing in the cat box for a few years like 15 years ago.
- I came here to say this. Like wtf he’s done more for this country than half of the citizens born here
  
  I’m not a big fan of blind patriotism. Service members sign up to serve our country, and not all of our country’s military endeavors are very honorable….
  I don’t think a service man or woman deserves any more respect than a janitor, or a tomato picker. We need to respect all workers, especially if they are law abiding and just trying to help their families.
  Without comprehensive immigration reform, we are shooting ourselves in the foot to spite our ability to walk by randomly deporting these crucial members of our society.
  Serving in the military and getting a Purple Heart means this person went above and beyond.
  Regardless, why are we letting foreign nationals serve in the military with no path to citizenship… it’s pretty dumb. The federal government needs to uphold its end of the deal.
  Deporting service members is stupid, even if they are dishonorably discharged.
  What the actual fuck?
  This particular situation is even more fucked up and ironic than it seems,
  He was injured in the Noriega War in which the CIA put a cocaine drug trafficking dictator into power and then later decided to fight against him.
  This poor soldier got injured in a war and then later got PTSD, and became addicted to the same drugs the CIA was importing into the country. I’ll say it again, what the actual fuck?
Can someone kindly explain to me how you can be a veteran but not a citizen?
- U.S. citizens and some non-citizens can join the military. If you are not a U.S. citizen, you must:
  Have a U.S. Permanent Resident Card (Green Card)
  Speak, read, and write English fluently
  You cannot join the military to enter the U.S. or to get a visa.
  Source: https://www.usa.gov/military-requirements
- Being a citizen is not a requirement for serving in the US armed forces
  
  I always assumed that fighting for the army means you're a citizen.
  And I do think that if you served in active duty, you deserve citizenship.
  But I'm not American. They can make their own rules of course.
Park moved to the U.S. from Seoul when he was 7 years old and had legal permanent residency under a green card.
he suffered from severe PTSD. He turned to marijuana to cope with nightmares and sensitivity to loud noises and moved to Hawaii in 1995 for a better lifestyle. But he became addicted to crack cocaine and struggled for years to get clean.
Crack led to prison led to revoked green card.
- Service in the US armed forces let to injury and PTSD, which let to drugs, which led to...
  FTFY
- More proof that the War on "Drugs" is largely an authoritarian criminalization of untreated mental health issues.
  We shouldn't lock people up for addiction any more than we should lock people up over depression.
  
  “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
One less war criminal.

63 comments