Jose Barco, a U.S. Army veteran awarded a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq, is currently being held in a Texas detention center awaiting deportation after having lived in the United States for 35 years.
Barco, who is not a U.S. citizen but has served in the military, has a criminal record, having just completed his 15-year prison sentence the day after President Donald Trump‘s inauguration.
U.S. immigration officials recently tried to deport him, but he was turned away by Venezuelan authorities and now “is virtually stateless at this time, with his country of birth rejecting his admission and the country he shed blood for ordering him removed,” Anna Stout, former mayor of Grand Junction, Colorado, who is helping the Barco family, told Newsweek in an email Sunday.
Newsweek has reached out to Barco’s wife, Tia Barco, via a GoFundMe for his legal fees, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) via email on Sunday.
Why It Matters
Trump campaigned on a hardline immigration stance, pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. In the initial months of his presidency, his administration has deported around 100,000 illegal immigrants.
Although the administration says it is prioritizing individuals with criminal records or gang affiliations, some legal residents and non-criminal immigrants have also been detained and deported.
Trump has drawn some ire from veterans after hundreds of former service members have been fired from their Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) posts as part of Trump’s effort to downsize the government and reduce waste. Around 30 percent of the federal workforce are veterans, and the VA is the single largest employer of veterans in the civil service.
Non-citizens who serve in the military may be eligible for expedited naturalization if they meet all the requirements, including serving “honorably” during a “designated period of hostilities.”
Who Is Jose Barco?
Barco, 39, was born in Venezuela to a father who fled Cuba after being released as a political prisoner. He came to the U.S. when he was 4 years old and is now married to a U.S. citizen, Tia Barco, and is the father of a 15-year-old daughter, according to NPR.
He joined the U.S. armed forces at a young age and was first deployed to western Iraq in 2004. There, he saw intense combat with insurgent groups and sustained multiple serious injuries from blasts and collisions. He later was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), NPR reported.
He returned to Iraq in 2006, when reportedly one of his commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel Michael “Hutch” Hutchinson, helped him fill out the forms to become a naturalized citizen.
Hutchinson wrote in a memo to immigration officials in February 2025: “I distinctly remember Jose Barco completing and submitting his application for United States citizenship…At some point the packet was lost and we have not been able to find a chain of custody document,” according to NPR.
Newsweek has reached out to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for comment and confirmation via email on Sunday.
Barco was honorablydischarged from the military in 2008, at age 23, with serious TBI symptoms. He served in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, which was later featured in a PBS Frontline documentary that showcased soldier violence, lasting trauma, drug use, and depression after war.
On April 25, 2008, Barco opened fire on a house party crowd in Colorado Springs, striking a 19-year-old, who was five months pregnant at the time, in the leg, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. He was convicted of two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of felony menacing and was sentenced to 52 years in prison.
Barco served 15 years in prison at Okaloosa Correctional Institution in Florida and was released on parole on January 21, 2025.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon/NPR/Tia Barco
What To Know About His Detention and Deportation
In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an old wartime law granting the president broad powers. Since then, hundreds of Venezuelans, many reported gang members, have been loaded onto planes and deported, with many ending up in a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Barco was reportedly detained by ICE following his release from prison on January 21, taken to a Colorado detention center and then to two different centersin Texas. He is currently held in El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, Stout told Newsweek. Newsweek could not locate him in the ICE detainee database.
In late-March, Barco was reportedly deported to Venezuela via Honduras and was stopped and turned back to Texas. Stout confirmed this to Newsweek, adding that “he was the only detained person on the plane that returned to the U.S.”
“Deportation plans are nebulous at this time and Jose and his team have not been given information about what US immigration authorities plan to do about his deportation order, given the fact Venezuelan authorities declined to take him last week,” Stout told Newsweek. “Jose is virtually stateless at this time, with his country of birth rejecting his admission and the country he shed blood for ordering him removed.”
People supporting Barco have worked to try and secure an attorney for him, however Stout noted the difficulty of the process as “Jose has encountered multiple barriers to retaining an attorney due primarily to the frequent and sudden transfers among ICE/GEO facilities, impeding any attorney’s access to him.”
What People Are Saying
Anna Stout told NPR earlier this month: “His situation is incredibly complex and tragic. It’s the story of multiple failures of the U.S. military when it comes to one of its own soldiers, of a man who fought and bled for the United States believing he was earning his right to be called an American only to find himself in deportation proceedings, and of the tragic intersection of a new age of immigration policy and unfortunate parole timing.”
Jose Barco told The Denver Gazette in March: “I’m not Venezuelan even though I was born in Venezuela. I’m not Cuban either because I wasn’t born in Cuba, but my parents are Cuban. I’ve lived in this country since I was 4 years old. But to them, I’m not an American. I don’t know what I am.”
Reinier Barco, Jose Barco’s brother, told KKTV in early March: “He has roots in this country. And to uproot it and send him somewhere else like he came here illegally and committed a crime entering the country. This is crazy.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a February press briefing: “It’s a promise the President campaigned on, that if you invade our nation’s borders, if you break our country’s laws, and if then you further commit heinous, brutal crimes in the interior of our country … you are going to be deported from this country, and you may be held at Guantanamo Bay.”
What Happens Next?
It is unclear what’s to come in Barco’s immigration challenge. If he obtains an attorney, a case may be filed on his behalf.