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By David Averre
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Amid all the division in our politics and social circles, the U.S military and our reverence for those who serve in it remain close to sacred. Every politician thanks the troops. Stadiums salute them. Airports invite uniformed service members to board first.
America loves another idea, too: that it is a land of opportunity. Here, it doesn’t matter where you’re from—all that matters is what you are prepared to make of yourself. Or, so the story goes.
For generations, the unification of those two uniquely American ideals has offered untold numbers of non-American citizens a fair deal.
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Put on the uniform, and you are accepted into a special kind of brotherhood where your race and creed no longer set you apart from those beside you. If you’re willing to serve the country, and perhaps lay down your life for it, you earn your place in the national story.
Unless ICE gets you first, that is.
Now, Senator Elizabeth Warren and more than 60 congressional Democrats are demanding answers from the Trump administration over efforts to deport noncitizen veterans and their families, and arrests made on active service members.
It might be legal, but it sure as hell ain’t American.
Uncle Sam Needs You, but Not Like That
The Democrat lawmakers headed by Warren penned a letter on August 9 to the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, along with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and ICE. In it, they demanded the head of each department and organization respond to a litany of reports that current and former U.S. service members had been detained, with some facing deportation.
DHS told lawmakers that ICE arrested 125 former members of the Armed Forces between January 20, 2025 and January 26, 2026. Of those, 73 were detained and 34 placed in removal proceedings, with at least 282 veterans and their immediate family members facing deportation.
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The lawmakers’ letter also says ICE’s own statistics show 16 serving members of the armed forces have been arrested by immigration enforcement agents since October.
These actions fly in the face of one of the oldest traditions America has. During the Civil War, federal law already gave honorably discharged immigrant soldiers an easier route to naturalization as American citizens.
The practice has endured ever since. More than 800,000 people have won their citizenship through military service since World War I, according to Congressional Research Service records. Citizenship and Immigration Services data shows roughly 187,000 of those passports were handed out to those who served post-9/11, and more than 50,000 under the Biden administration.
In theory, the bargain still stands.
Under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noncitizens enlisted in the military during active hostilities can apply for naturalization after a single day of military service, without meeting the standard residence requirements. Thousands of noncitizens serving in the military are naturalized each year.
The principle behind the bargain isn’t hard to grasp; if someone is prepared to defend America’s interests and run the risk of coming home in a wooden box draped in the stars and stripes, they should be afforded privileges in line with that commitment.
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The Case for ICE
ICE also has the law on its side.
For all the special provisions offered to noncitizen military personnel who wish to receive their American passports, military service does not automatically grant citizenship to every immigrant who signs up. Nor does it automatically exempt a service member from being subject to the other aspects of immigration law.
Criminal convictions are one of the many factors taken into account by immigration law that apply to U.S. military veterans. Warren’s letter recognizes that 46 of the 125 former service members arrested by ICE between January 2025 and January 2026 had active criminal warrants.
The legislation is also clear with regard to families of current and former service members.
Having a child, spouse or parent in uniform doesn’t confer automatic legal status on an entire family. Your husband may have joined the military; you did not. Just because a daughter may be prepared to go to war, it doesn’t mean her father isn’t eligible for deportation.
Trump did not invent the practice of deporting veterans, either. An investigation by the Government Accountability Office published in 2019 found that ICE records identified some 250 veterans who faced removal proceedings in fiscal years 2013-2018. Of those, 92 were removed, and 90 of those 92 had one or more criminal convictions.
Trump has, however, presided over a dramatic uptick in the number of detentions targeting service members and veterans. ICE arrested the same number of former service members from January 2025 to January 2026 as it did across seven years, from FY2018-2024.
Fabric of a Nation
There is no blanket legal protection, then, that makes noncitizen U.S. service members, veterans or their families immune from immigration enforcement or removal. But law is only part of the foundation upon which a nation is built; the rest is moral fabric, a set of ideals, and a sense of what it takes to be accepted as part of that nation.
Apparently, those ideals can be applied selectively.
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Just six days before Warren sent her letter, Trump signed an executive order establishing the President’s Military Spouse Commission, which will be tasked with advising on housing, employment opportunities, healthcare, education and deployment support for military spouses.
In the order, Trump declared that military spouses are "intrinsically linked to the good order, readiness, and retention of our military," and said thriving military families mean "a more resilient fighting force." At the same time, DHS told Congress that Citizenship and Immigration Services had issued deportation notices to 113 immediate relatives of veterans after denying their applications for a special military-family protection.
Immigration law even contains a provision allowing for foreign-born U.S. military personnel who die while serving honorably on active duty to be recognized as a citizen at death. In other words, you can fight for America and get your citizenship, but you won’t be able to enjoy it.
Elizabeth Warren and dozens of her Democrat colleagues have demanded a response to their letter by August 23.
In the meantime, the nearly 50,000 foreign nationals serving in the active and reserve components of the Armed Forces—and another 125,000 noncitizen veterans still residing in the United States—will be holding their breath.
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