Migrating To Prison

What if I told you an Army Veteran was incarcerated, and faced a possible deportation?

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández is a professor of law at the University of Denver and an immigration lawyer. He runs the blog Crimmigration.com and regularly speaks on immigration issues. He has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, the BBC, and many other media outlets. A native of McAllen, TX, a city at the heart of the American immigration debate, he now lives in Denver.

He is also the writer of the book Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants. This book, as you will hear me say a lot of times during the episode, sheds a light on an issue everyone is familiar with — yet few understand the huge implications it can have on someone’s life: Immigration Policy. This book also offers compelling evidence about immigration imprisonment.

In Migrating to Psison, César argues that immigration law has become too predatory, and no one is exempt of being a target of ICE and being incarcerated— not even if you are a permanent resident.

Gerardo Armijo, known as Jerry, was born in Mexico and came to the United States and achieved permanent resident status. After finishing high school, he joined the Army; He was deployed to Iraq and during his tour, he was a tank operator. One day, a bomb hit his tank and he got injured. So, naturally, he came back to United States to recover.

It is evident that just being deployed to fight a war can make someone suffer serious mental issues, such as PTSD. Now, imagine that on top of that, you get wounded. No man is strong enough to face such adversity. It is our responsibility to understand this, and help our veterans recover with proper attention, and a proper healthcare system— one thing Jerry lacked.

After coming back to the US, the trauma he experienced was too much, and he turned into drugs. Later, when he was convicted for possession, he was assigned to a state-run rehab program for veterans. He showed up always to the meetings and was following to the letter all rules of the program. But one day, he stopped showing up. Why? As César puts it in Migrating to Prison:

Then, one day, he suddenly stopped showing up. No one, not his family, his friends, not even his lawyer, knew where he was. It turned out that he had been arrested by ICE and sent to the Port Isabel Detention Center. No one had bothered to tell his lawyer or the judge overseeing the rehab program. — (Garcia Hernandez, Migrating to Prison. 2019)

One can argue that, after immigrating to North America, Jerry had succeeded in finding a place where he could be free. Thus, he became enamored with his new country. One could argue that he loved it so much, it wasn’t enough to just enjoy it — he had to defend it. Jerry decided to enlist to the army, and defend the freedom his new home had given him.

Now, if you ask me, there is not one single piece of evidence that proves one loves his country so much as what Jerry did for his country; Enlisting to the army is the way of proving your love to your country. Let it sink a bit more — jerry wasn’t born a US citizen yet he fought America’s war.

What I still can’t wrap my head around is the fact that, whenever I go to a baseball stadium for example, we all rise in the presence of a US Army Veteran and thank him for his service. Yet with Jerry, we did the opposite — we incarcerated him.

After being wounded in combat, Jerry came back to the US and was starting his journey to recovery. But, as I mentioned before, this recovery can get pretty dark. Jerry started using drugs, he stopped showing up to his rehab meetings. As they say… he fell off the wagon.

What happened next is very sad. He stopped showing up to rehab meetings and, surprisingly, it wasn’t because he was abusing any substance — he got incarcerated in a detention center. Jerry, a US Army Veteran, got incarcerated. Jerry, someone who showed courage by fighting overseas for his artificial nation, was sent to a detention center.

I still can’t believe this story, and how it isn’t an isolated case. It is unfathomable to think that a passport can be stronger than a uniform when it comes to prove one’s love for his country. Moreover, this shows how twisted our immigration policies have gotten. An individual who fell off the wagon does not need to be shown such treatment, but rather we must fight for him, the same way he fought for us.

César argues in his book that:

…Cases like Jerryʼs highlight how far reaching immigration imprisonment has become. His military service proved his love for the United States, but to immigration law, itʼs the passport, not the heart, that matters. The direct link between Jerryʼs warzone trauma and his criminal activity makes him unusual, but not unique. No one is sure how many veterans have been thrown into immigration prisons because of crimes linked to his experiences in combat… — (Garcia Hernandez, Migrating to Prison. 2019)