In a quaint living room, a couple sits and house momentos tell the story of two lives, lovingly lived as one in reverence to exchanged vows of forever.
Seated in a wheelchair beside his wife Ann, is the Pakistani veteran Zahid Chaudhry, who became paralyzed in an army training exercise gone awry. Though the room is awash in hues of honey, a pensive static hangs as the couple reads aloud their fate from a government letter: “Citizenship has been denied.”
The two squeeze hands and Zahid concedes, “such is the life, such is the life.” Ann tenderly touches Zahid’s chin and replies, “we’ll get through this.”
This scene comes from John Valadez’s 2020 documentary “American Exile,” a documentary which unearths the stories of four families whose lives intertwine through the experience of a shared injustice: serving their county only to then face deportation, an exile imposed by the country they risked their lives for. Though the film only follows the story of four, the nearly invisible practice of deporting veterans has spanned across decades and first found its precedence in the anti-immigrant backlash of the 80s and 90s.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which increased penalties for undocumented immigrants. “This law made more crimes, including relatively minor ones like shoplifting and possession of marijuana, grounds for deportation,” attorney Mariela Sagastume told NBC News. “It took away judges’ discretion to consider military service, community ties, family ties and other mitigating factors in deportation cases.”
As a result, an estimated number of 94,000 veterans have been deported following their service to the country. According to the US Government Accountability Report, the U.S. has deported ninety-two veterans between 2013 and 2018 but experts challenge this number as well as the veterans advocating for justice on the frontlines.
For the Valenzuela brothers, Manuel and Valente — featured in “American Exile” — their story of deportation began with their service as teenage soldiers in the Vietnam War. In Valente’s service time, the army tasked him with the daily job of collecting dismembered bodies from the battlefield in a garbage bag, packed for delivery to the dump. On another occasion, Valente recounts a situation which forced him into decapitating a terror suspect with a machete.
With an “artist’s heart,” as told by director Valadez, Valente has moved forward in life by utilizing writing as a practice of healing. “I still have demons and some of them will follow me to the grave, but it’s like a release from the wounds of the war,” Valente said in “American Exile.”
Brought on by the retroactive nature of the 1996 law, the Valenzuela brothers received their deportation notices in 2009, 50 years after their service, for misdemeanors committed in their youth.
Following the war, the Veterans Affair diagnosed Manuel as 68 percent disabled and Valente as 70 percent disabled due to severe PTSD. The brothers’experiences align with the wider problem at hand: a nation of veterans at risk of suicide, suffering from PTSD and disabled. As highlighted by the film, 18 veterans commit suicide a day and half a million suffer from PTSD.
For deported veterans who do not have access to VA benefits and health care, their reality becomes one akin to a “death sentence,” as said by documentary filmmaker, Carleen L. Hsu.
Political scientist and Sociology professor at University of San Francisco Marco Durazo’s upcoming book, “The Few, The Proud, The Deported: Race, Military Service, and the Politics of Immigration Enforcement,” grapples with the magnitude of this injustice via qualitative research interviews and accessing the available data at large.
In an interview with one veteran, the flippantly cruel nature of the deportation process was revealed. To Durazo, the deported veteran recounted being walked to the border by an ICE agent. When the veteran voiced his concerns over accessing resources and not knowing Spanish, the ICE agent replied, “ask Mexico for help.”
Durazo’s research also reveals the nexus between Black, Afro-Latinx and Latinx military service and their maltreatment by the U.S.
“You have Black deported veterans who came from the Caribbean and have a long history of serving in our wars and in our military,” said Durazo. The devastating irony of deporting these veterans remains unlost on Durazo.
“When the veterans die, they’re able to come home and be celebrated as heroes and buried with full military honors in our military national cemeteries,” said Durazo, noting that the message is, “you’re not allowed to come back. But if you do die in Mexico, you’re welcome to come home.”
In paving a pathway forward to repatriation and naturalization, the efforts of orgs like the ACLU, activists like the Valenzuela brothers and work of others, like Durazo and Valadez, coalesce to apply pressure for legislative changes.
Recognizing these efforts, in July of 2021, President Biden promised to create a process for repatriation in partnership with the Veterans Affairs. Since then, Biden and the VA have failed to implement a formal process. The VA has processed to work on individual cases and has spearheaded vaccination initiatives across the border.
Until Biden’s promise comes to fruition, and the missing element of naturalization is addressed, the fate of hundreds of deported veterans remains, as well as their separation from family, and from their country. As illustrated by the stories of “American Exile,” this is a fate tethered to heartbreak.
Captured on camera in the living room scene between Zahid and Ann, is the truth of this injustice and its sorrows. Ann says, “I didn’t get married to live a world apart from the love of my life.”