President
Biden has the opportunity to right a grievous wrong. Black people who
served this country in the U.S. armed forces are being deported - now
is the time for the president to bring them home.
You
did not misread this. And the story you are about to read is as
outrageous as it sounds. As we hear the news about thousands of
people - including many Black people - cast aside and sent away for
their undocumented or non-citizen status, few of us realize that some
of them served in the armed forces.
Since
1997, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility
Act has allowed for automatic deportation because of a criminal
conviction, no matter how minor the infraction. Some crimes are
related to
PTSD
or substance abuse,
which puts vets at a greater risk of being imprisoned. How many vets
have been deported over the years is unclear because
the government
didn’t screen
vets before deporting them.
During the last administration, Trump blocked expedited citizenship
for vets, and vets get little guidance on the naturalization process.
Legislation
recently introduced in Congress - the Veteran Deportation Prevention
and Reform Act - would allow
deported military veterans
to return to America and place immigrant vets on the road to U.S.
citizenship. Last year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas
said the deportations “failed to live up to our highest
values,” and vowed his department is “committed to
bringing back military service members, veterans, and their immediate
family members who were unjustly removed and ensuring they receive
the benefits to which they may be entitled.”
Thankfully,
some deported Latinx vets have
returned
across the Mexico border and even
became
U.S. citizens. But
what becomes of the Black veterans of the African Diaspora?
An
artist who a decade ago created a
mural at
the border in Tijuana honoring deported veterans,
Amos
Gregory has
elevated their cause and fought for their return. Gregory is also the
founder of the San Francisco Veterans Mural Project, known as
Veterans Alley.
“Almost
three years ago I started pushing the deported groups to advocate for
deported Black veterans,” Gregory told theGrio,
noting that media attention has been focused on the U.S.-Mexico
border, and organizations in California have provided support to
Latinx vets. “It pissed me off that with the attention to
Latinx veterans there is no attention paid to Black veterans.”
Working
with deported vets, Gregory has come to know their stories. For
example, consider the plight of
Rudi
Richardson.
Born Udo Ackermann in a German women’s prison, his mother was a
German Jewish Holocaust survivor, and his father was a Black American
GI named George. Richardson was one of 10,000 “Brown
Babies”
- the children of Black soldiers and German women born in Germany
after World War II. This group was highlighted in
EBONY
magazine.
Rudi’s
case highlights the effects of systemic racism in America, Gregory
said. “These unions and their children were frowned upon by the
military,” he said. “And the G.I.s wanted to raise a
family with women in Germany, and they were transferred. And the U.S.
army purposely facilitated all this trauma and harm that happened to
these German brown babies.”
After
experiencing trauma and abuse in foster care, Udo was adopted as a
toddler by the Richardsons, a Black military family stationed in
Germany. Eventually, the Richardsons would return to the U.S., and
Udo would grow up believing he was Rudi Richardson from Long Beach,
California.
“He
didn’t find out until he was 17 that he was adopted when he was
sitting before a judge and given a choice to go to jail or go to the
Army,” Gregory said.
Richardson
joined the Army and became an airborne paratrooper stationed in
Germany. When he was discharged from the military, he started a
family. Dealing with repressed childhood trauma, drug dependency and
being fired from a job because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen,
Richardson went downhill, winding up on Skid Row in Los Angeles. He
would be deported in 2003 to Germany-where he was born but did not
speak the language and was not a citizen-for petty theft.
Because
his father was a U.S. citizen, Richardson was entitled to birthright
citizenship but never received it. The Army had promised him he would
automatically receive citizenship after his honorable discharge.
Clearly, that did not happen.
Consider
what becomes of deported veterans…those who were promised
citizenship and dropped off in other countries after an ICE raid or
getting entangled in the criminal justice system. They emerge
helpless in a new country they may not remember, separated from their
families without a support system and totally dependent on the local
population for food, clothing and shelter.
Rudi
now lives in London, where he founded the nonprofit organizations
Streetlytes-UK
and
Open Soulz,
which service the unhoused and vulnerable.
“It’s
a call to action for us. We have this loss,” said Gregory of
the displacement of Black people. “I consider Rudi a lost one
but not lost forever. He is one of us. He is a brother, he is an
African American. His ancestors were enslaved people in the United
States. Why doesn’t he have his citizenship?”
Amos
Gregory believes the Biden administration has a responsibility to
care for deported veterans who re-enter society, a burden that Black
people should not have to shoulder, even as we advocate for their
return.
“There
will be a lot of deported veterans coming in. What is your plan? What
is your resource book so deported veterans can get their medical
care, their disability, especially my combat vets with PTSD?”
Gregory asked. “They shouldn’t have to come back and be
re-traumatized by a system. And the community shouldn’t have to
do it.”
“Deported
veterans are a lynchpin of the African Diaspora and how war has
spread us apart and brought us back together,” Gregory says.
“The systemic injustice that sends us apart, sends us far and
away. Thank you for your service. Now get out.”
This
commentary was originally published by The
Grio
