Summary
In a harsh example of Trump’s immigration crackdown, U.S. Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient Jose Barco faces deportation to Venezuela, despite serving in Iraq and suffering severe combat injuries.
After his citizenship application vanished during service and he served prison time for a violent offense linked to untreated trauma, ICE detained him upon release.
Venezuela won’t accept him, leaving him stateless.
Barco’s case spotlights the Trump administration’s punitive policies toward veterans, erosion of due process, and broader threats to constitutional rights under his increasingly authoritarian leadership.
You’re acting like this wasn’t the intention all along… They laid the groundwork with the claims of criminal immigrants, got the MAGA crowd frothing at the mouth about it, and then started deporting people.
Their supporters just need to hear that “the bad guys are getting deported,” and they celebrate. They don’t know, or really care, that 90% of these people have no criminal record.
More specifically, many don’t know. Many still know and are completely on board with it. This is absolutely what was intended.
Turns out that manufacturing consent in the age of MAGA and Fox News is trivially easy (another intended consequence of decades of propaganda).