Immigration officials deported the spouse of a U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving their 12-year-old daughter in the country without parents. According to The Arizona Republic, 30-year-old Jose Gonzalez Carranza was detained by immigration officials and deported last week. Carranza, who arrived in the U.S. when he was a teenager, married Army Pfc. Barbara Vieyra in 2007. Vieyra died in 2010 after she was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan at the age of 22, and Carranza was subsequently granted a “parole in place” that terminated any deportation hearings he had at the time, according to the Republic.
However, Carranza’s lawyer told the newspaper that Immigration and Customs Enforcement re-filed the case against him 2018 and detained him when he failed to show up for his court date. Carranza’s attorney told the paper ICE sent the court notice to the wrong address. According to the Republic, Carranza is currently in Nogales, Mexico, and worried about his daughter, who is staying with her grandparents. “I feel so bad,” he told the newspaper. “I’m thinking about, I might never see her again.” His lawyer later told the newspaper that ICE permitted Carranza re-enter the U.S. on Monday evening, transporting him to Phoenix for release and releasing him on “his own recognizance.” The agency reportedly provided no information about the case to the Republic.
Read it at The Arizona Republic
