U.S. Sens. Mazie Hirono and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem condemning her agency’s treatment of Sae Joon Park, a Hawaii veteran and Purple Heart recipient who was ordered to “self-deport ” to South Korea in June after more than five decades living in the United States.
Blumenthal is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and Hirono (D- Hawaii ) has served on the committee for years.
“While DHS press releases frequently claim that this administration is going after ‘the worst of the worst, ’ your department’s actions towards this veteran say otherwise, ” the lawmakers wrote in the Friday letter. “As members of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, we ask why your department chose to treat someone who has fought for our country in this way.”
Park was born in South Korea but came to the U.S. at age 7 and grew up in Los Angeles before joining the U.S. Army at age 19.
After being seriously wounded in combat in Pa nama in 1989 and leaving the Army with an honorable discharge, he struggled with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and self-medicated with drugs, leading to a years-long struggle with addiction.
He jumped bail in New York after being arrested for trying to buy crack cocaine and was again arrested in Hawaii and extradited. He was convicted of misdemeanor drug charges, but the bail-jumping conviction was regarded as a felony and prompted federal authorities to revoke his green card. When he was released from prison, immigration officials issued Park a removal order.
But they ultimately issued a deferment that allowed him to stay in the country as long as he attended regular check-ins with federal agents. His military service and later good behavior in prison made him a low priority for deportation. He has been clean ever since.
Over the last decade, he raised his now-grown children in Hawaii and until this summer had been working at Aloha Kia. Lately, he had been also caring for his elderly mother, who is exhibiting early stages of dementia. But when he checked in with immigration authorities this year, he was given a month to get his affairs in order and self-deport. He was issued an ankle bracelet and told he would be forcibly detained if he didn’t comply.
Park hopes to return to Hawaii and, with his lawyer Danicole Ramos, is appealing to the Queens County District Attorney’s Office in New York to revisit the bail-jumping conviction that led to his deportation and see if it can be retroactively reduced.
Ramos told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “That allows us an opportunity to reopen his removal case in the New York Immigration Court—they keep the removal order—and it gives him some kind of a pathway, hopefully, for him to come back to the United States.”
But in order for Park to make his case, the federal government would have to grant him humanitarian parole to return to New York to address the charges. Under his current removal order, he is not legally allowed to return to the United States for 10 years.
Senior Trump administration officials have stood by the decision to deport Park.
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin cited Park’s “extensive criminal history.” Park has previous misdemeanors for illegally possessing a firearm while living in L.A. before his Army service and a misdemeanor assault in Hawaii when he was still struggling with addiction.
McLaughlin said in a statement, “President (Donald ) Trump and Secretary Noem have been clear : criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S. If you come to our country and break our laws, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you. That’s a promise.”
In the letter to Noem, Hirono and Blumenthal wrote, “This callous statement ignores the struggles that many veterans face after their service ; approximately 11 % of veterans’ first visit to a Veterans Affairs medical clinic is related to substance use disorder.”
Immigrants have a long history of service in the U.S. military. The military sends recruiters to Pacific island countries looking for candidates and, during some periods, the Pentagon has looked for immigrants who speak languages and have cultural knowledge that commanders want to support certain missions.
Today, as much as 5 % of the people serving in the U.S. military are noncitizen immigrants. It’s unclear how many veterans have been deported after their service, and lawmakers have been debating the issue for more than a dec ade, with little consensus on how these cases should be handled.
Park told the Star-Advertiser that while he’s a South Korean national on paper, he grew up thinking of America as his country, especially after he was wounded. He hadn’t been to Korea in decades and said he regards it as a foreign country. He can speak conversational Korean, but isn’t literate in the language and struggles to read or write it. He said that has made it incredibly difficult for him to find employment.
After deportation, honorably discharged veterans are still entitled to benefits they earned, and the Department of Veterans Affairs offers services through a humanitarian parole program and the VA Foreign Medical Program. But a 2024 study by the University of California, Berkeley School of Law found that deported veterans face severe obstacles to accessing both.
Park said that the deportation experience has worsened his PTSD symptoms that had been brought in check for years and that he struggles again with nightmares. He also said he fears that if he can’t return to Hawaii, he won’t be there when his daughter marries and worries about his mother.
In their letter, Hirono and Blumenthal asked Noem to provide the Veterans Affairs Committee with information on how many veterans have been deported under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, what guidance DHS has given on the cases of veterans with histories of PTSD or addiction and what changes have been made to the criteria for removing immigrants with deferred action or supervised release orders.
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