Trump and Stephen Miller are trampling on the U.S. military and rule of law in the name of mass deportation
U.S. military veteran Sae Joon Park, an immigrant who arrived in America from South Korea at age seven, is the best of who we are. Looking for purpose after graduating from high school, Park enlisted in the U.S. military and was later awarded a Purple Heart for injuries he sustained while deployed in Panama. “I don’t regret joining at all, even getting shot and everything,” he later said. “I do feel that was part of my life story, and it is what made me who I am today.” But last month, he was forced to self-deport to a country he hasn’t called home for decades.
Like many other military veterans, Park struggled with PTSD related to his injuries. “Though his body began to heal, he said his mind did not,” NPR reports. “Back then, Park didn’t know he was dealing with PTSD. So, he never sought help and the trauma slowly took a toll. He eventually turned to drugs to cope.”
His attempt to self-medicate would eventually lead to prison time, the revocation of his green card, and a deportation order. As veterans groups, lawmakers, advocates have said, service members in crisis need compassion and care, not to get kicked out of the country they served. Fortunately, he was allowed to remain here as long as he regularly checked in with immigration officials. He returned to Hawaii, got a good job, and continued raising his kids. “Watching them grow into kind, successful adults was his greatest blessing, he said,” NPR said.
But even though he’d already served his time and dutifully attended his appointments, that no longer mattered to the Trump administration, which told him during his June check-in “that he would be detained and deported unless he left voluntarily within the next few weeks,” NPR continued. So on June 23, after 50 years in the United States, he boarded a flight leaving the country he fought for and returned to a country he “barely remembers,” NPR said.
Now back in South Korea, he’s separated from his children and elderly mother and feels himself again struggling with his diagnosis.
“It just comes out of nowhere. I’ll be walking around just thinking about something, I’ll just start bawling, just crying nonstop. And I have no control over that,” Park told NBC News. “I’ve been dealing with it the best I can everyday.”
Park isn’t alone in getting targeted by ICE despite serving the nation in uniform. Marlon Parris, an Iraq veteran who also struggled with PTSD, was snatched off the street just days after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Loved ones of veterans and active service members have also been targeted. In just one example, the father of three U.S. Marines was brutally beaten and abducted while working a landscaping job at a local IHOP. Horrific footage captured by a bystander showed the masked men holding Narciso Barranco, 48, to the ground while one repeatedly punched him. “On his first call to his son after the detainment, Barranco was less concerned with his injuries and more concerned with his job,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “He told him where his truck and equipment were and asked him to speak with his client and finish the job, the younger Barranco said.”
Narciso’s son, Alejandro, said “that had he treated a detainee the same way while he was serving as a Marine, ‘it would have been a war crime,’” NBC News reported.
These abductions and deportations both separate families and risk our military readiness. Not only does the U.S. military depend on foreign-born recruits to build and strengthen its numbers, skills and power, military service has been a valuable mechanism for immigrants to gain U.S. citizenship. Now recruitment worries abound as military veterans and advocates have also expressed alarms over the administration’s deployment of National Guard and U.S. Marines to immigrant communities in L.A. Trump’s rushed deployment of National Guard reportedly left many sleeping on floors as others say they haven’t been paid.
“This is what happens when the president and (Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth) demand the National Guard state assets deploy immediately with no plan in place … (and) no federal funding available for food, water, fuel and lodging,” a source told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is really the failure of the federal government. If you’re going to federalize these troops, then take care of them.” Military.com also reported in early June that troops unlawfully deployed to the state were “unpaid due to delays in issuing official activation orders, leaving compensation and benefits in limbo.”
Trump’s “effort to make America militarized again puts our Marines in a dangerous situation and goes against the founding principles of our nation,” Dan Maurer, Associate Professor of Law and Lt. Col. (retired) U.S. Army JAG Corps, said during a recent press event.
“The rules of engagement Marines learn for warzones like Iraq and Afghanistan are vastly different from the Constitutional rights they must respect when deployed on our streets and working with ICE,” Maurer said. “Our founders did not consider civilian protests as rebellion and never wanted our armed forces policing our streets. In fact, it was the use of the military by the British monarchy to quell dissent that sparked the American Revolution and why our founders feared a standing Army.”
Veterans are sounding the alarm about the dangerous misuse of military force against civilians protesting ICE actions. :movie_camera: www.youtube.com/shorts/-KyUY…
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2025-07-04T18:29:02.231Z
Veterans and military family advocates are raising concerns about ICE detentions and military deployments targeting immigrant communities. Watch this powerful moment from our event: 🎥 www.youtube.com/shorts/fapGq…
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2025-07-03T20:59:12.568Z
“The mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, not engage in law enforcement activities,” said Joe Plenzler, Marine Corps combat veteran and member of the Board of Unite for Veterans Coalition. “The deployment of 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines in Los Angeles is dangerous and a gross misuse of a great battalion.” Plenzler also noted the distinguished history that Latino service members have in the U.S. military, including his own platoon.
“When I led the 1st Platoon of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, about half of my Marines came from Spanish-speaking families,” he continued. “Imagine what it must be like for them today to be ordered to do a law enforcement job they are not trained to do and support the arrests of people who look a lot like the folks they’d see at their own family reunions.”
“I am here because I need to step up to speak for the ones who cannot speak for themselves… I know what it feels like to be undocumented & having to be living in the shadows for fear of being deported," said Carlos Gomez Perez, a proud Iraq War veteran.www.eastcountymagazine.org/%E2%80%9Cice…
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T15:44:52.053Z
Carlos Gomez Perez, an immigrant, Iraq veteran, and recipient of the prestigious Silver Star, said he sees it as his duty to speak out against the brute force playing out against his neighbors and community.
“I am here because I need to step up to speak for the ones who cannot speak for themselves,” he told East County Magazine about his participation in a pro-immigrant rally in El Cajon. “I know what it feels like to be undocumented and having to be living in the shadows for fear of being deported. I’m no longer that 9-year-old undocumented boy that had no voice. I’m now a 42-year-old Marine combat veteran from Fallujah who’s been shot twice and awarded the Silver Star, which is the third highest medal of honor.”
“He recalls that someone spoke up for him when he had no voice as a child, to ensure he would have a pathway forward,” East County Magazine continued. “Now, he says, ‘It’s my duty’ as well as a ‘privilege to speak up for other people that currently are scared.’”
