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Collateral consequences-immigration
And here is an Air Force Times report:
When Rohan Coombs joined the Marine Corps, he never thought one day he would be locked up in an immigration detention center and facing deportation from the country he had vowed to defend. . . .
The estimates are of about 8000 non-U.S. citizens enlisting to serve in the U.S. armed forces in any given year.
Most immigrants serve with distinction. The Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research and development center for the Navy and the Marine Corps, found that non-citizens are far more likely to complete their enlistment obligations successfully than their U.S.-born counterparts. Coombs was one who did not make the grade. He spent 10 months in the Persian Gulf and lost friends to combat, he said. After the war, he felt depressed and anxious. His family was far away in New York, and he said “whining” to fellow Marines didn’t seem an option. Instead, he got involved with drugs, and he got caught. In 1992, he was court-martialed for possession of cocaine and marijuana with the intent to distribute, and was given 18 months of confinement and a dishonorable discharge. He continued to struggle with drugs.
And he’s awaiting deportation proceedings. The article sets out a push to get non-U.S. citizens who have served a special status which would limit their deportability.