A TRINIDAD-BORN Gulf War veteran continues to languish in a New Jersey detention facility, fighting a US immigration order that could send him packing back to his country of birth.

Warren Joseph, according to New York 1 News, has been held at Hudson County Correctional facility more than two years while fighting a deportation order following six months served in jail for parole violation.

But his family has continued to fight the order, hiring a lawyer to appeal the decision while Joseph continues to hope for a miracle that will help him to leave detention and start over anew.

Last week Saturday at an anti-war march, his sister Angela Joseph made connections between the war in Iraq, the misplaced war on terror, and the crackdown on immigrants at home.

ANGELA JOSEPH,
WARREN’s sister,
protests his
imminent
deportation.

For her, those connections hit all too close to home.

For the past three years, she has been fighting to stop the deportation of her 40-year-old brother, a decorated vet and father of four.

Like many immigrants, Angela says, Warren joined the army to escape poverty -- in his case, the drug-infested streets of Brownsville, Brooklyn.

He served for eight years and earned numerous achievement medals, and was commended for leading his fellow infantryman to safety while battling Iraqi soldiers in Saudi Arabia.

But Joseph says her brother came home from the war with a back injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and quickly spiralled into abusing alcohol and drugs.

“He couldn’t sleep at night because he heard guns firing in his head,” she recalls.

“His life was unravelling.”

Angela fears her brother could face further targeting in Trinidad as a convicted criminal.

“I know what he did was wrong -- we all know that,” she says.

“But why deport him now, as a veteran, when he has already served his country, and when he has already served his time? Why make him pay twice?”

Under current laws, her brother cannot ask an immigration judge for a pardon, even in light of his military service.

The proposed new immigration laws stand to further close off his options. It’s not just HR 4437, the House bill everyone’s protesting about.

The “compromise” legislation proposed by Senators Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez would also expand the grounds for deportation of those convicted of crimes.

The Senate measure would still allow immigration officials to use domestic military bases as detention facilities, and legalise the practice of holding people indefinitely.

(A US Supreme Court ruling that President George Bush overstepped his authority by detaining “war criminals” illegally at Guantanamo Bay may put a temporary damper on this type of approach).

Angela knows there are those who will say her brother deserves no second or third chances.

But what of the other foreign-born soldiers now coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan?

Many may return home with troubled minds or substance abuse issues.

What happens when they run into problems?

According to one army study, a third of soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq sought mental health care, and 19 per cent were diagnosed with a mental disorder like post traumatic stress disorder, depression, or anxiety within a year of coming home.

Joseph says her brother never got the counselling and drug treatment he needed. He was just “discarded.”

“I am standing here with the anti-war movement because I am also fighting a war -- the war on immigrants,” Angela wrote in a statement for the media crews gathered last Saturday.

“In this war, the casualties are Black and Brown families, American children whose parents are deported, women who have been turned into single mothers by the US Government, and veterans like my brother.”