Picture this: You moved to the United States as a teenager. You're not a citizen, but you served your country. You were wounded in combat, and you came home to rebuild. You settled down, got married, found a good job. You're in the process of becoming a citizen. You go to the Department of Veterans Affairs for a routine check-up — maybe new glasses, a hearing test, the usual. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is waiting, ready to remove you from the nation you call home, where you raised a family, that you put your life on the line to serve.
This isn't fiction. It's becoming reality at the VA. The administration has already begun deporting veterans, and even military spouses directly from US bases, and just when you think they could not sink any lower, the agency is now directing offices to rat out any noncitizen employees or any noncitizens affiliated with the VA, including veterans.
A memo issued late last month, written by VA Chief of Staff Christopher Syrek and ordered by VA Secretary Doug Collins, commands every VA office nationwide to compile a list of all noncitizen “full-time and part-time employees, contractors, health professional trainees, and volunteers” by December 30. The list will then be delivered to the VA's Office of Operations, Security, and Preparedness and forwarded up the chain. “Anyone who is not authorized to be in the US,” a VA spokesperson told the military outlet Stars and Stripes, “will be dealt with accordingly.”
In Donald Trump's Washington, “deal with accordingly” regarding noncitizens usually means only one thing: ICE.
The Guardian indeed reported that the VA is building a database of noncitizens, with the VA confirming to the outlet that it will share data with other agencies, partly for immigration enforcement purposes. In a statement to Rolling Stonethe Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz denied the VA is creating a “database,” but noted that the department is “required by federal law to continuously vet all employees and affiliates, such as unpaid researchers and others who may have access to VA data or systems, to ensure they meet the federal government's trusted workforce standards,” which is why the directive to out noncitizens was issued.
For a department already facing a massive shortage of doctors and nurses, this is yet another self-destructive policy disguised as national security. The VA claims identifying noncitizens this is routine “continuous vetting.” But the federal “trusted workforce” program does not require list-making by citizenship status. Nor does it mention immigration status at all. This isn't workforce modernization. This is a dragnet aimed at scooping up noncitizens with any ties to the VA.
Worse, many of the people whose names will end up on that list are veterans themselves. More than 100,000 military veterans lack citizenship. Thousands more are lawful permanent residents. The VA employs around 450,000 people, over a quarter of whom are veterans, according to the Pew Research Center. This doesn't include the thousands of contractors and other affiliated workers that will also be subject to the VA's new memo, many of which are also surely veterans.
These men and women fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Vietnam, and elsewhere in conflicts stretching back decades. You don't need to imagine how the second Trump administration treats them. Just look at the record.
ICE has been snatching and detaining veterans ever since Trump returned office. Julio Torres, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, was detained by ICE at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport earlier this year after returning home from visiting family in Mexico. ICE also tried to deport Army veteran Jose Barco, a Purple Heart recipient wounded in an IED blast, after he served his sentence for a crime rooted in untreated trauma (Venezuela refused to take him). Sixty-one-year-old veteran Sae Joon Park lived in the US since childhood, but was forced to self-deport this year after ICE threatened to detain him. Three months ago in Georgia, a noncitizen veteran named Godfrey Wade was snatched up during a traffic stop for not using a blinker. His family still has no idea how he is doing. “He wasn't born in this country, and still, he loves this country enough that he signed up to serve it,” his fiance told a local CBS affiliate. “Fifty years later, when he needs this country, this country is turning its back on him.”
Now imagine ICE receiving a freshly printed, VA-verified list of every green card holder, asylum seeker, and non-resident and legal resident veteran affiliated with the department. Every foreign medical resident, every immigrant nurse, every noncitizen researcher treating PTSD, cancer, and traumatic brain injury. The immigrant who is grateful for an opportunity to make it America, humbly working in the kitchen of a VA hospital. Imagine the knock-on effect: widespread fear, resignations, unfilled jobs, delayed appointments, worse care.
As our public institutions seem to grow more fascist by the day, any veteran or non-veterans proudly shouting “I voted for this!” should be asking themselves one question: Who will stand up for me when it's my turn?
