Should military veterans be protected from deportation? | The Tylt

Despite a directive from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis protecting military veterans from deportation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to move forward with the deportation of Xilong Zhu, a Chinese immigrant and Army veteran.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to have ignored a directive from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to prevent the deportation of noncitizen troops and veterans, seeking to remove a Chinese immigrant despite laws that allow veterans with honorable service to naturalize, court filings show.

Xilong Zhu, 27, who came from China in 2009 to attend college in the United States, enlisted in the Army and was caught in an immigration dragnet involving a fake university set up by the Department of Homeland Security to catch brokers of fraudulent student visas.

Many feel deporting military veterans is cruel and wrong. If you risked your life to serve this country, you deserve to stay. Undocumented veterans already have a tough enough time as it is and lack the safety net other veterans benefit from. Allowing them to stay in the country if they haven't committed any crimes is the right thing to do.

Some, like California Gov. Jerry Brown, have stepped in to protect veterans from deportation.

But others argue the law is the law, plain and simple. If you came to this country illegally, what you did once you got here is irrelevant. Allowing undocumented immigrants to stay just because they're veterans would be unfair to those who wait for years to obtain their citizenship legally.