Veteran who has been in US since he was 4-years-old faces deportation

Jose Barco, a U.S. Army veteran awarded a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq, is currently being held in a Texas detention center awaiting deportation after having lived in the United States for 35 years.

Barco, who is not a U.S. citizen but has served in the military, has a criminal record, having just completed his 15-year prison sentence the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

U.S. immigration officials recently tried to deport him, but he was turned away by Venezuelan authorities and now “is virtually stateless at this time, with his country of birth rejecting his admission and the country he shed blood for ordering him removed,” Anna Stout, former mayor of Grand Junction, Colorado, who is helping the Barco family, told Newsweek in an email Sunday.

Newsweek has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) via email on Sunday.

Why It Matters
Trump campaigned on a hardline immigration stance, pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. In the initial months of his presidency, his administration has deported around 100,000 illegal immigrants.

Although the administration says it is prioritizing individuals with criminal records or gang affiliations, some legal residents and non-criminal immigrants have also been detained and deported.

Trump has drawn some ire from veterans after hundreds of former service members have been fired from their Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) posts as part of Trump’s effort to downsize the government and reduce waste. Around 30 percent of the federal workforce are veterans, and the VA is the single largest employer of veterans in the civil service.

Non-citizens who serve in the military may be eligible for expedited naturalization if they meet all the requirements, including serving “honorably” during a “designated period of hostilities.”

Mental illness is common among veterans and military personnel. A 2017 Rand Corporation analysis found that out of the 2.8 million service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, between 13 and 20 percent experience posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 19 to 23 percent have a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and 44 percent have difficulty adjusting to civilian life.

Who Is Jose Barco?
Barco, 39, was born in Venezuela to a father who fled Cuba after being released as a political prisoner. He came to the U.S. when he was 4 years old and is now married to a U.S. citizen, Tia Barco, and is the father of a 15-year-old daughter. Tia told Newsweek in an email Sunday that he has never met his daughter outside of prison, but the couple “had hoped” for it.

She also said that despite having been married for 15 years, “due to his conviction” he has not applied for a green card through marriage.

Barco joined the U.S. armed forces at a young age and was first deployed to western Iraq in 2004. There, he saw intense combat with insurgent groups and sustained multiple serious injuries from blasts and collisions. He later was diagnosed with a TBI, NPR reported.

He returned to Iraq in 2006, when reportedly one of his commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel Michael “Hutch” Hutchinson, helped him fill out the forms to become a naturalized citizen.Hutchinson wrote in a memo to immigration officials in February 2025: “I distinctly remember Jose Barco completing and submitting his application for United States citizenship…At some point the packet was lost and we have not been able to find a chain of custody document,” according to NPR.

Newsweek has reached out to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for comment and confirmation via email on Sunday.

Barco was honorably discharged from the military in 2008, at age 23, with serious TBI symptoms. He served in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, which was later featured in a PBS Frontline documentary that showcased soldier violence, lasting trauma, drug use, and depression after war. He was previously stationed at Fort Carson.

On April 25, 2008, Barco opened fire on a house party crowd in Colorado Springs, striking a 19-year-old, who was five months pregnant at the time, in the leg, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. He was convicted of two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of felony menacing and was sentenced to 52 years in prison. His sentence was later reduced to 40 years in 2014.

Barco served 15 years in prison in Colorado, Tia told Newsweek. She said he first served at Buena Vista Correctional Complex and then the last five years in “an incentive program at CSP Colorado State Prison [Penitentiary].”

He was released on parole on January 21, 2025, and was “immediately detained,” his wife recounted to Newsweek.