http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/alex-horton
Alex Horton reports for the Washington Post:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to have ignored a directive from prevent the deportation of noncitizen troops and veterans, seeking to remove a Chinese immigrant despite laws that allow veterans with honorable service to naturalize, court filings show.
Xilong Zhu, 27, who came from China in 2009 to attend college in the United States, enlisted in the Army and was caught in an immigration dragnet involving a fake university set up by the Department of Homeland Security to catch brokers of fraudulent student visas.
Zhu paid tuition to the University of Northern New Jersey, created by DHS to appear as a real school, long enough to ship to basic training using the legal status gained from a student visa issued to attend that school.
Then ICE found him and asked the Army to release him for alleged visa fraud. He left Fort Benning, Ga., on Nov. 10, 2016, in handcuffs as an honorably discharged veteran. He was detained for three weeks and released.
Zhu is waiting for a Seattle judge’s ruling on his removal proceedings, which are based on allegations by ICE that he failed to attend classes in violation of his student visa. His attorney says his client is a victim of federal entrapment.
Zhu’s case comes amid Trump administration pressure on immigration judges to speed up deportation proceedings in an apparent move to adjudicate more removals, aligning with President Trump’s stated goals.
But it also comes after Mattis said he would protect certain immigrant recruits who enlist through a program designed to trade fast-tracked citizenship for medical and language skills. Those assurances followed sustained controversy over how the Pentagon has exposed more than a thousand foreign-born recruits to deportation. A background-screening logjam began in late 2016 when fears of insider threats slowed clearances to a glacial pace.
[ A deported veteran has been granted U.S. citizenship, after 14 years of living in Mexico ]
“Anyone with an honorable discharge … will not be subject to any kind of deportation,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon in February, describing exceptions for those who commit a “serious felony” and anyone who has been authorized for deportation in an agreement he said was made with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Zhu’s attorney, retired Army officer Margaret Stock, told The Washington Post those exceptions do not apply to him.
DHS referred questions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Spokesman Jonathan Withington declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. ICE declined to provide a comment attributable by name.
But through court documents, ICE has interpreted the Mattis directive applies to a narrow group of foreign recruits that exclude Zhu. It’s unclear whether ICE consulted with the Pentagon on the subject, or if the agency has moved to deport other immigrant recruits since Mattis spoke in February.
Xilong Zhu at Army basic training graduation in 2016. (Xilong Zhu)Zhu graduated from basic training on June 9, 2016, and was handed over to ICE custody months later, after the Army lost a battle to retain him, Stock said. Zhu was included in a group of “holdovers,” an Army term he disdains that refers to soldiers who fail training.
That wasn’t him.
“It made me nauseous to be lumped into that group,” he told The Post.
How Zhu got in his predicament is a strange, bureaucratic odyssey after he graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin in 2013. He wanted to become a U.S. citizen, so he decided to enlist through the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program that his father in China had read about. It trades expedited citizenship for language and medical skills in short supply among U.S.-born recruits.
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Gee whiz, I thought that spending a week with the grandchildren in Beloit, Wisconsin might get us away from most of the Trump zaniness. But, no such luck as this story about a Beloit College graduate hit during the week. No end to the ways that ICE can think up to waste taxpayer money, clog already overwhelmed Immigration Court dockets with cases that no responsible prosecutor would even file, and exhibit mindless cruelty and irrationality in the process. Small wonder that some pols are starting to suggest that American would be safer and better off without ICE.
PWS
04-06-18