Army Private 1st Class Miguel Perez, Jr., the Afghanistan veteran deported by the Trump administration this past weekend, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took selfies “like fishermen with a prize fish” during the flight and despite being transported with a group of others, was singled out ahead of them. “They wanted to make sure to get rid of me first,” he told the Chicago Tribune. Perez wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to his family and “didn't realize he'd been deported to Mexico until it was too late to turn back,” CNN reported:
Perez was escorted across the US-Mexico border from Texas and handed over to Mexican authorities Friday, ICE said in a statement. Perez says a truck took him to an airport in Indiana. He was then flown to Brownsville, Texas, ICE said.
When he got off the plane, Perez said he arrived at a "place that looked like an office."
"I did not know it was already the bridge to enter the other side," he said, adding that he walked through a door that closed quickly behind him. "When I went back they told me everything is over."
Perez had been in ICE detention since 2016, after getting his green card revoked over a nonviolent drug conviction. Perez “said that what he saw and experienced in Afghanistan sent his life off the rails,” leading him to struggle with PTSD and addiction. The same administration that wants to throw a parade to honor the military could have stopped his deportation and helped put him on a road to recovery. They didn’t. "Although I am free,” Perez said from Tijuana, “there is not much joy in being free.”
“This is an intolerable way to treat a man who fought bravely for this nation,” said Rev. Emma Lozano of the Lincoln United Methodist Church, who, along with Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), had advocated for a stop to his deportation. “They have left him homeless and penniless in a dangerous place, without food or money or clothes or needed medications.”
Perez said his struggles began following his second deployment to Afghanistan. "After the second tour, there was more alcohol and that was also when I tried some drugs … but the addiction really started after I got back to Chicago, when I got back home, because I did not feel very sociable.”
The Chicago Tribune notes “Perez is one of many veterans, some of whom sustained injuries and emotional trauma during combat, who have been decorated for service, then confronted with the possibility of deportation after committing a crime”:
As with many others, Perez mistakenly thought he became a U.S. citizen when he took an oath to protect the nation. He discovered that was not the case when he was summoned to immigration court shortly before his release from a state penitentiary.
Instead of heading home to Chicago from prison, Perez was placed in the custody of ICE and transferred to a detention center for immigrants awaiting deportation.
Perez, 39, told the Tribune last Thursday in a call from a detention center in Kankakee that he became worried when all of his electronic devices had been shut off. He had been planning to speak to his 10-year-old son the next morning, but never got the chance.
He still doesn’t know what he’ll tell his son when he calls him from Mexico.
Sen. Duckworth, herself a veteran of the Iraq War, had introduced a “private immigration bill” to protect Perez, but under the Trump administration, ICE has been effectively been ignoring them. Duckworth also attempted to appeal to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen, but she did not respond. "This case is a tragic example,” Duckworth later said, “of what can happen when national immigration policies are based more in hate than on logic and ICE doesn't feel accountable to anyone”:
Perez went on a hunger strike earlier this year, saying he feared deportation would mean death. Aside from not getting the treatment he needs, he told CNN that he fears Mexican drug cartels will try to recruit him because of his combat experience and will murder him if he doesn't cooperate.
"If they are sentencing me to a certain death, and I am going to die, then why die in a place that I have not considered my home in a long time?" he asked.
“Who will be responsible if my son loses his life over there?” his mother, Esperanza Montes Perez, asked. Rev. Lozano was clear: "We're going to hold ICE responsible if anything happens to Miguel Perez Jr.”
