An army veteran and Purple Heart recipient who served two tours in Iraq was deported on Friday morning from an immigration detention facility in Florence, Arizona.
Arizona state representative Raquel Terán told Fox 10 Phoenix that Jose Barco, a Venezuelan-born veteran whose family fled Cuba as refugees, was deported at 4am from Arizona.
Anna Stout, a volunteer on Barco’s defense team, told Denver 7 his team was not notified of plans for his deportation and his family was initially not told of where they would be taking him.
“Jose was not able to reach out to his family before any of this initiated,” she told the news outlet, adding that the process has been “frustrating”.
Immigration enforcement told Fox 10 that Barco was deported to Nogales in Mexico.
The court previously ordered for his removal to either Venezuela, Cuba or Mexico.
Barco’s father was a political dissident in Cuba who spoke out against communism, forcing his family to flee to Venezuela in the 1980s. Four years after Barco was born, his family entered the US, where they were given permanent resident status.
Barco enlisted in the army at 17 and served two tours in Iraq. Barco was injured by an improvised explosive device during one of his deployments, and received a Purple Heart for his service in combat. He was also awarded a Combat Infantry Badge. During his military career, Barco had filled out paperwork for citizenship, which reportedly was lost during processing, the Denver Gazette reported in February, shortly after Barco was detained.
Barco, 39, served 15 years in prison for a felony conviction of attempted murder. In October 2009, Barco was sentenced to 52 years after being convicted of firing a gun at a house party in Colorado Springs. He was suffering from PTSD. One of the bullets he fired hit a 19-year-old woman in the leg.
Barco was released on parole this January after serving 15 years due to good behavior. Upon release, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detained Barco and took him to a detention center in Colorado.
In September, an immigration judge denied Barco’s relief appeals, which included an application for asylum, and ordered for the veteran’s removal from the US without specifying a date.
Stout told Denver 7 that an online locator system for detainees showed that Barco had been removed from the country, though his defense team was not notified of his specific location.
“This has been incredibly difficult for his family,” Stout said. “And as you can imagine right now, to add insult to injury, not only are they dealing with the weight of all of that, but also the uncertainty about what’s happening to their loved one.”
The Guardian has contacted Barco’s defense team for comment.
