Purple Heart recipient José Barco thought he had paid his debt to society after he served 15 years in prison for attempted murder.

The federal government decided otherwise.

Barco, a U.S. Army veteran who was injured in Iraq, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January when he was granted parole. He’s now being held in Denver and is slated to be deported to Venezuela, where he was born after his family fled Cuba, under a federal law that allows noncitizens to be stripped of legal residency and removed from the country if they are convicted of a crime.

The Biden administration issued a directive in 2022 making it harder for ICE to deport noncitizen veterans. But the Trump administration has sought lists from jails and prisons of noncitizen inmates and detainees as part of its mass deportation campaign.

At least four veterans — all of whom have criminal records and were lawful permanent residents before their service — are in ICE detention facilities and facing deportation proceedings, The Washington Post confirmed through interviews with family members and attorneys. More than 80 noncitizen veterans were in the federal prison system as of late August, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

For those who have been released from prison after serving sentences, deportation feels like an “unjust second punishment,” said Jennie Pasquarella, legal director at the Seattle Clemency Project, which provides legal aid to formerly incarcerated people.

Scott Mechkowski, who spent 22 years in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division and over 30 years in the Army, said he and his ICE colleagues “always had to give discretion to military service” by looking for legal ways to grant relief from deportation to veterans convicted of certain nonviolent crimes, such as drug possession. Barco’s case is different because he was convicted of an aggravated felony, Mechkowski said.

But he said Barco’s situation still represents “a catastrophic failure across the board” because his attorney says he filed for naturalization before his crime and the system failed to process his applications.

“He shouldn’t be deported,” Mechkowski said. “He answered the call when we needed him.”

Removing former service members from the country also infringes on their access to Department of Veterans Affairs health care and other earned benefits, said Danitza James, who served in the Army and advocates against deporting veterans.

“We’re not saying that they’re not guilty. We’re not saying don’t make them serve their time,” James said. “All we’re saying is don’t deport them. Don’t take them away from their benefits … their support, their families, everything that they fought and some of them bled for.”

Though troops are eligible to apply for naturalization while serving, the process isn’t always clear to them. Some also wrongly assume that the oath of enlistment guarantees their permanent status in the country, said Rose Carmen Goldberg, an expert on veteran law at Yale Law School.

Kimlis Tek, a Cambodian refugee who served in the Army and National Guard for about three years, said he thought he was “automatically made a citizen” when he took the oath of enlistment, based on information from his recruiters. He came to the United States in 1984 as a toddler, and his family settled in Southern California as lawful permanent residents.

Amanda Schuft, director of legal services at Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, said the promise of naturalization is “used in recruitment efforts but that commitment is not followed up on,” which can leave people vulnerable to deportation.

After leaving the military, Tek was convicted of assault and domestic violence, court records show. He served 14 years in a state prison in Washington, where he worked toward an associate’s degree and developed carpentry and bakery skills.

Tek was released in May and immediately placed in ICE custody.

“We had a room ready for him,” said his younger brother, Syleaph Tek, who became a citizen more than a decade ago. “He was going to be living with me until he could get up on his feet, that was the plan.”

Now Kimlis Tek is being held at a detention center in Tacoma, Washington, and faces deportation to Cambodia — where he has no remaining family, his brother said. He was born at a refugee camp in Thailand.

Barco, the Purple Heart recipient, was sentenced to prison after firing a weapon outside a party in 2008 and injuring a pregnant woman. He had recently been medically retired from the military after being diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury following a deployment to Iraq. He was 23.

Barco has said he has no memory of the crime, according to his lawyer, who said his client had experienced a flashback at the time of the shooting. Barco has also been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder — a condition, his brother said in a letter to the court, that has been “severely exacerbated” in ICE detention.

Advocates for Barco have attempted to get him access to Veterans Affairs health care while he is detained, but the requests have been denied or gone unanswered, according to an email reviewed by The Post. VA is restricted from providing health care services to veterans who are inmates if another government agency in charge of a jail or prison “has a duty to provide care or services,” according to a department directive included in an email explaining the denial. VA officials did not respond to a request for comment on Barco’s case.

Barco — who served in uniform for about six years — had attempted to gain citizenship twice, said his lawyer, Kevin O’Connor. The first time, the military lost his application, a U.S. Army officer wrote in a court filing. The shooting outside the party took place as the second attempt was being processed, O’Connor said. (Barco declined an interview through his lawyer because proceedings are ongoing.)

“He was good enough to serve our country, good enough to help rescue two fellow soldiers,” Tia Barco said of her husband, referencing an incident during his first deployment to Iraq, where he sustained severe burns while lifting the front end of a car off two trapped soldiers, according to Ryan Krebbs, the company medic. “But now he’s not good enough to be forgiven for a mistake,” his wife said.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, noted the severity of Barco’s crime in a statement and called him and Tek “heinous criminal aliens.”

For Krebbs, who served with Barco in Iraq, fighting his friend’s deportation doesn’t mean denying the seriousness of his crime. “He accepts full responsibility,” Krebbs said. But the fact that a combat veteran could be deported, he said, has been “eye-opening.”

This month, Barco’s attorney tried a new tactic. While Barco is not eligible for asylum because of his criminal conviction, O’Connor is asking the court to grant him relief under the Convention Against Torture, arguing that his status as a former U.S. service member would put him at special risk of persecution or torture if he is deported to Venezuela.

The judge in Barco’s case has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, and the veteran’s family is hopeful he will consider Barco’s military service, O’Connor said. Tia Barco said she has let herself feel “slightly optimistic” about her husband’s case.

Margaret Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and an expert in military and immigration law, said Barco’s potential deportation feels particularly unjust because his combat injury may have contributed to or caused the action that landed him in prison.

“That’s not what America is about,” she said. “We’re supposed to treat the veteran and restore them to health if we can, not deport them.”

For the family of Marlon Parris, another Army veteran who is facing deportation after serving time in prison, the process feels like double jeopardy, said his wife, Tanisha Hartwell-Parris.

Parris arrived in the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago when he was 19. He served in the military for more than five years. When he completed his probation in 2016 after serving time for distributing cocaine, he received a “letter of no interest” from ICE, stating that the agency is “not amenable to deportation,” according to a copy of the letter shared by Parris’s attorney.

But in August 2024, during the Biden administration, Parris received a notice to appear for removal proceedings. The family was preparing to challenge it. ICE detained Parris on Jan. 22, and he has since been held at a facility in Arizona, said his lawyer, Douglas Kouffie.

McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman, said Parris “will remain in custody pending his removal.”

Kouffie said his client “feels like he’s paid for his crimes and that this detention is unjustified,” adding: “The government went back on their word.”

For the veterans facing removal and their loved ones, a feeling of betrayal lingers over their memories of military service.

“I was willing to go fight and die for this country,” Tek said in a phone interview from the detention center. “I didn’t know they could deport veterans.”