SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Ruben Robles returned to the U.S. on Thursday morning after being deported nearly 27 years ago.
Robles was a legal resident, but not a U.S. citizen while serving in the Army during the Vietnam War.
After being convicted on a drug charge, he was among the first to be deported in accordance with the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which allowed the deportation of legal permanent residents convicted of certain felonies.
Since his deportation, Robles lived in Tijuana in what he said was an apartment that overlooked the border where he could see all the way to downtown San Diego.
“It was hard seeing that every day,” Robles said.
With an American flag in hand, Robles said he was happy to be back on U.S. soil but admitted harboring some anger toward the country he was willing to die for.
“I felt like I was treated like trash, like not wanted, you know, used,” he said.
Ruben Robles returned to the U.S. almost 27 years since being deported. He served in the Army during the Vietnam War.
Robles lived in the Los Angeles area from the age of 5 when his parents brought him from the Mexican state of Zacatecas.
“Ruben is a deported veteran that had been exiled the longest,” said Robert Vivar, director of the Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resources Center. “You can imagine the struggles he has endured: PTSD, anxiety, trauma.”
Vivar has been lobbying for the Veterans Service Recognition Act, which has been mired in Congress since last year.
If approved, it will give U.S. citizenship to legal residents who serve in the military the minute they graduate from boot camp.
It will also provide a committee to review cases like Robles’ to see if convictions can be reversed and criminal records erased.
But Vivar recently said that with the incoming Trump administration and a Republican controlled Congress, the bill is likely to grow cold because many consider it an immigration issue and not a Veterans cause.
Vivar is now hopeful President Joe Biden will give deported veterans pardons, making it easier to get citizenship and not have to face the threat of deportation, because the vets that are being allowed back are coming across on humanitarian parole grounds, which can be revoked every two years.
“It’s very important that he signs those pardons today,” he said. “President Biden needs to live up to his promise and bring deported veterans home, and this is where he has that opportunity, now is the real time, moment of truth, he has to sign those pardons.”
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