"Today is not your lucky day": U.S. military vets who fought for America and were deported anyway - washing dishes restaurant jobs

Vietnamese veteran Hector Barrios lives in Tijuana.
I decided to go to the small house in his rental room.
One of his friends, Jesus Ballesteros, met me on a nearby sidewalk next to the red pickup truck Barrios used to sell used clothes.
I think the Street is narrow, the house across the road has a tree-lined terrace, and the water pipes in the driveway have a splash of water.
The little boy jumped on the hot concrete and watered the plants.
Jesus brought me into the room rented by Barrios.
No more than 9 10 feet
Beds with pink quilts take up most of the space.
The foot of the bed, against the mirror of the dresser, is a large piece of cardboard with more than a dozen photos of Barrios.
There are a few people who seem to be in Vietnam, outside the tent, with a green Jeep in the background.
Barrios looks gaunt.
He had a black beard full of heads and a charming smile in his tired eyes.
I felt the sleepless night leaving tired lines on his cheek.
A green military uniform hanging on the cloakrack and a desert camouflage cap on the paneled wall.
I noticed a crumpled newspaper clippings on the young Barrios who was playing football next to a calendar with an angel portrait of Jesus.
A picture of the Pope was wrongly pinned aside.
Born in 1943, Barrios moved to the United States. S.
When he was eighteen
He served in the Army from 1967 to 1969.
On 1968, he was sent to Vietnam and suffered head injuries during the fighting.
He received the Defense Ribbon, the Vietnam Service Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal and the Army Commendation Medal.
But honor did not ease the pain of his injury and he began to use heroin.
Barrios was expelled from the United States. S.
1999 for possession of marijuana
He continued to use heroin in Tijuana.
"There's fire every day, everything, fighting
You don't know if you're going home, "he said in an interview with another journalist before his death.
"It changed a person's life.
It changed everything.
I'm crazy.
Jesus said, "he always talks about Vietnam.
How did his commander die in front of him?
They walked very close.
They assured each other that if one of them was injured, the other would bring him in.
Barrios kept his promise.
Jesus continued: "He has a great heart to man . ".
"He never abused anyone.
However, the use of heroin continued in barrios;
He had respiratory problems and died in April 21, 2014.
His family is considering sending his body to the United States. S.
Despite his deportation, he still had the right to attend a complete military funeral because of his glorious release.
But because of America. S.
Threw him out, his family buried him in Mexico and maintained his room when he left the room.
"No one is sleeping here except his ghost," Jesus said . ".
If you search for Hector Barrios on Google, you will find photos of the expelled veteran next to his coffin, the black and yellow badges of his unit --
The first jockey-
Decorate the walls of the funeral home.
A close friend of Barrios, Army veteran Fabian repoledo, also attended the meeting.
Jesus told me that he was also suffering from war.
I met with Rebolledo at Las Playas de Tijuana in tiwarner, in a house full of unpacked clothes, stacked suitcases and a bed, about half
One hour ride from the support station. The salt-air-
Rusty fence between Mexico and the United StatesS.
Not far from his house.
The burning brown cliffs of Mesa climb up a valley on the east, and the sunset burns the Pacific Ocean in bright orange tones.
Rebolledo kicked a friend's collie out of the house and took me in.
He is wearing Adidas blue jersey and jeans.
Like his friend Barrios, his smile was charming and relaxed, but he did not show much emotion when he spoke.
He has a building that falls wrest hands and is easy to move in a maze of boxes.
There was a thin beard under his nose.
He sat in the chair opposite me, with an American flag behind him.
"Yes, sir," "No, sir," he slipped into the army, answering some of my questions --think.
He sat high.
Facing the back of my chair.
I sat on the sofa with some springs under the mat.
Rebolledo spent his childhood in Cuernavaca, Morelos, south of Mexico City.
There are two beds, a table and a stool in his small house.
There is a thin wooden porch around the house.
He shared a bed with his parents and five siblings.
In the summer, they slept on the palm leaves outside and woke him up in the warm morning.
He will stand up and fetch water with a bucket of sticks hanging on his shoulder balanced.
When he was eleven, his brother and sister moved to Los Angeles.
A year later, they paid for his father and another brother to come over.
The second year, 1988, they were 13-year-old Fabian. California.
It was too big, he recalled. The buildings.
Highway.
The vast expanse of land, houses, and shopping centers stretch for miles until they are so far away that they shimmer uncomfortably on the horizon.
At school, the American Student Union says, hey, you little bastard.
He doesn't know what that means.
He can't speak English, he can't speak English, but he listened and slowly began to understand.
His father works in buildings and restaurants.
His mother sewed clothes for the tailor.
Rebolledo began washing dishes at a restaurant in Almonte when he was ten years old.
He remembers the address of 12050 Magnolia Avenue.
He suspected it was still there.
He graduated from high school and attended community college, but dropped out of school to help his parents.
He found a job at the farmer's market.
Shoes and boots for sale, stupid belt buckles, watches and sandals.
Construction.
On 1994, he became a permanent resident through his father's petition to adjust his immigration status. It was a climax.
There are also lows.
A girlfriend broke up with him and he bought a beer to deal with his broken heart. He liked it.
I like it too much.
He wasted all his time.
I need to do something, he recalls.
I will end up in an institution, a rehabilitation center or a cemetery.
He joined the Army in 1997.
For discipline.
To answer the question, he was 23 years old and "How will I deal with my life ".
The first stop after he joined the Army, hill castle, Thunder.
When he got off the bus, the instructor began to scream. Maggots! he yelled.
Rebolledo loves it.
Sergeant sweat stream sweaty's back face, roaring mouth.
He sees shouting as an act, an interesting thing.
He likes the rush of obeying orders in a hurry.
Even now, when he thought of it, his heart accelerated. Push-ups, sit-ups, running.
Shooting Range. The hand-grenade field. Road marches. Twenty klicks.
Sometimes it rains or snows, hot or cold or windy.
Well, the weatherman, he will say to himself.
Okay, bring it.
The sergeant yelled on your face and spat on your face.
Rebolledo took it all and dug it up against it. He never quit.
Thirteen weeks later, he volunteered to go to airborne school.
It paid an extra $150 a month.
He was fascinated by 80-year-old Charlie batri.
The second airborne division trained as a gunner assistant.
He can't remember jumping out of C-130.
He's the third jumper. His legs shook.
His body trembled and his heart was in his throat.
He thought he would vomit.
Before his chute was opened, he fell like a bag of heavy objects and pulled him up like a yo-yoyo.
He only has a few seconds to figure out where and how to land.
Pull a strap and hope to come down gently.
It took a while to learn.
When he hit the ground on his first jump, he didn't get up at all.
It is a good thing that he let the Kefla fiber absorb the vibration.
But as the shock faded, he felt that he had fallen from the sky.
He remembers all this.
If he had a chance to do it now, he would do it, and he would jump even though his knees were not good.
Just last night, he had a dream that he jumped off the plane and fell from the sky.
He met his wife Bertha in 1998.
Her niece is her friend and sometimes Bertha answers when Rebolledo calls her in California and they talk for hours.
In less than a month, he proposed to her by phone and then visited her.
He thinks she's beautiful.
Not super beautiful, but beautiful.
Soft skin, long black hair, black eyes, beautiful body.
They got married the next day. He’s like that.
When he wants something, he won't be second. guess himself.
He went out and got it.
His batteries were deployed to Kosovo in February 1999.
He did not pay attention to the war there.
He thought he would be sent to Kuwait to deal with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
He packed his luggage.
The pregnant Bertha then returned to California to live with her parents.
Kosovo has become a nightmare.
When the Red Cross informed his unit that his wife had a miscarriage, Rebolledo was no longer overseas.
A captain told him I'm sorry.
You have an hour to pack up and go home.
Rebolledo walked to his tent to play dominoes.
Rebolledo told him that it was not good to go back when his captain checked him.
I'm here to see how good the news is for all of you, no matter if I stay or go, the baby won't come back.
The captain said, you're a bad jerk.
He imagined that when he patrolled the Kosovo capital, Prishtina, and swept the area to find mines, his children could face countless horrors.
An uncontrollable anger spread to him.
One afternoon, a sniper hit his leg while he was patrolling the corn fields.
Six in a semi-final. automatic.
He thought there was a branch that hit him, but when he went forward his legs couldn't hold his weight and he crashed.
He was taken to a hospital in Moldova.
War sometimes overwhelmed him.
Seeing that the country was blown up, he was almost blown up himself.
The kids screwed up.
It is not human for him that people do not treat another person like this.
He felt helpless and was slammed.
He hit a soldier, called his mother, and hugged his rifle.
Hey fucking up, said Rebolledo, and then punched him.
Pull the fuck straight.
His sergeant reported him.
He was demoted, but a week later his rank resumed and he returned to the field more aggressively than before.
He didn't take anything from anyone.
What do you want now, he will say if he feels challenged.
His only idea is to live.
Like this time, he found a Serbian trying to blow up a municipal building.
The kid ran away before he caught him.
Little Bastard rigging C-4 explosives.
This shit drives Rebolledo bat shit.
He will remind himself to be vigilant. Stay alive.
His commander knows what Rebolledo can do with his anger.
They will ask him to "correct the captured Serbian soldiers a little ".
It means covering their faces and beating their shit out.
They are then piled up on the roadside or in villages to allow the Kosovo people to complete their tasks.
Man, don't do this, his gunner told him one night when Serbian prisoners were handed over to them.
Who the fuck are you telling me what to do they're orders.
If you don't like them, you know who you can complain.
In the end, he did stop.
Too much.
Hit them with his rifle. Kicking them.
After that, he would lie down and think that what he did was wrong, but he thought it was just an order.
Protection tasks.
He felt more and more far away from home.
He called his wife every night until he had nothing to say to her and then he stopped calling.
When his troops were ordered to go home on September 1999, Rebolledo did not want to leave.
His life is in Kosovo, not the United States. S.
But he has no choice.
He returned to Fort Bragg and felt as if he had landed in a foreign land.
He was so used to living in the wild between the bodies that he slept outside.
He was quoted for drunk driving.
But he is at home whether he is drunk or sober.
On March 2000, he was relieved and civilian life resumed.
Four months later, his wife gave birth to a son.
Rebolledo found a job as a security guard.
In 2005, he resumed construction and received another drunk driver.
He dreamed of Kosovo, of the dead baby.
He is grumpy.
However, he fulfilled all his family obligations.
He did a construction business and bought a house.
He put the food on the table and the money in the bank.
He will eventually seek help from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Trauma Stress Disorder.
The great recession broke him.
Three construction jobs were canceled.
He owes a warehouse $5,000 a month to store his equipment.
His truck was taken back.
He had to sell the house.
On May 2007, Rebolledo was charged with forging a felony for trying to cash a check of $750, which he said he was getting for his painting work.
He was suspended.
Three months later, he was again arrested by the authorities, this time because he violated his parole and his driver's license was revoked.
He was sentenced to 16 months in prison, attracting the attention of the Immigration Department.
Eight months later, he was released and handed over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau (ICE) for removal procedures.
On 2009, immigration officials transferred him to a detention center in El Centro, California.
He was deported to Mexico the next year.
He has no money.
Only his prison clothes, gray, gray.
On the bus to the border, a guard told him that you are a vet and so am I.
Well, you didn't hear this from me. Check it out.
You have 70.
Return to the United States two hours before your residence permit is canceled.
In Mexico, Rebolledo called his sister.
She spoke to their father.
He met with repodo in Tijuana and brought his residence permit.
Rebolledo told a border patrol officer that I was crossing back to California when I was in my 80 s. The second airborne.
I'm a Marine, said the guard.
Come on, come on, you can go, I don't need your ID.
Rebolledo and his parents live in Los Angeles again and he works in architecture.
Two years. No problem.
On January 2012, a police officer stopped him for speeding near Carl's house.
He does not have a license or a national ID card.
The police took him to Baldwin Park police station and checked his fingerprints.
There was no warrant, but his fingerprints were sent to the ice.
About six weeks later, six meth agents appeared at his parents' house. Six-
Thirty in the morning.
Rebolledo got up from the bed and opened the door. Squinting.
His parents are standing behind him.
The sun hardly rises, and the nearby House is slowly revealed in the dark. Nothing else.
No neighbors around.
Noise from a car somewhere in the distance.
Sir, an agent told him to go out for a minute.
Are you FabianYes?
Do you have the card IDRebolledo gave them to the Department of Veterans Affairs?
Where did you deploy Kosovo?
I'm really in Prishtina.
ReallyI is number 379.
I'm on project 505.
Can I take a look at your DD214Rebolledo and show him his discharge certificate?
The officer said two other officers around him were also veterans.
He discussed with them a few steps away from Rebolledo.
Rebolledo overheard him saying that I could not expel the vet.
What should we do, said a police officer. No one spoke.
Rebolledo heard their shoes wear concrete while moving their bodies and said nothing.
With his head down, he glanced at each other. Thinking.
He's not here.
They gave the DD214 back to Rebolledo.
The first officer said, sorry, you're not the one we're looking.
About six months later.
At 30 in the morning the next day, the mother of rapolado woke him up.
Ice is here, she said.
This time he will definitely be taken away and he hugs his parents to see you again.
He's wearing T-
Shirt and jeans met the broker at the front door.
He showed them his VA card.
They consulted each other like previous agents, returned his business card and apologized for disturbing him.
But on the morning of June 24, 2012, his veteran status was no longer important for half-time.
A dozen meth agents who confronted him at his parents' house
Seven in the morning.
He's dressed up to pick up his son from his ex-boyfriend. wife’s.
Going to the mall to buy some clothes for the boy is his top priority.
One of the ice scouts said today is not your lucky day.