Spouses of Veterans Face Deportation

Teresa Watanabe writes for the LA Times:

The nightmares still plague him. The terrifying mortar attacks. The loss of an Albanian soldier and ally, mutilated by shrapnel. The Iraqi children, bloodied and battered, lined up for medical care at the U.S. base at Mosul.

Two years after returning from his service in Iraq, U.S. Army Spc. Jack Barrios, 26, is fighting sleeplessness, sudden angry outbursts, aversion to emotional intimacy and other fallout from his post-traumatic stress disorder.

But as he undergoes counseling and swallows anti-depressants, the soldier is fighting an even bigger battle: to keep his family from collapsing as his wife, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, faces deportation.

His wife, 23-year-old Frances, was illegally brought to the United States by her mother at age 6, learned of her status in high school and discovered just last year that removal proceedings have been started. Her possible deportation has left Barrios in panic as he contemplates life without her.

The Army reservist says his wife is the family’s anchor, caring for their year-old daughter and 3-year-old son and helping him battle his post-traumatic stress.

“She’s my everything,” Barrios said as he sat glumly in the family’s sparsely furnished but tidy Van Nuys apartment. “Without her, I can’t function. It would be like taking away a part of my soul.”

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers are facing the same trouble as they fight to legalize their spouses’ status, a difficult process that has affected their military readiness, according to Margaret Stock, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves and an immigration attorney specializing in military cases.

Stock, speaking as a private attorney, said she gets at least one call a day from soldiers facing the deportation of spouses. Many are so stressed out they can’t concentrate on their jobs, she said.

“The whole military system depends on families being support networks for soldiers,” said Stock. “They’re an integral part of military readiness, so we need to take care of them.”

Concerned about the effect immigration problems are having on military families, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) has held hearings on the issue and last year introduced a bill to give undocumented spouses of U.S. soldiers a chance at gaining legal status. Click here for the full story.

bh