In a quaint living room, a couple sits and house momentos tell the story of two lives, lovingly lived as one in reverence to exchanged vows of forever.
Seated in a wheelchair beside his wife Ann, is the Pakistani veteran Zahid Chaudhry, who became paralyzed in an army training exercise gone awry. Though the room is awash in hues of honey, a pensive static hangs as the couple reads aloud their fate from a government letter: “Citizenship has been denied.”
The two squeeze hands and Zahid concedes, “such is the life, such is the life.” Ann tenderly touches Zahid’s chin and replies, “we’ll get through this.”
This scene comes from John Valadez’s 2020 documentary “American Exile,” a documentary which unearths the stories of four families whose lives intertwine through the experience of a shared injustice: serving their county only to then face deportation, an exile imposed by the country they risked their lives for. Though the film only follows the story of four, the nearly invisible practice of deporting veterans has spanned across decades and first found its precedence in the anti-immigrant backlash of the 80s and 90s.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which increased penalties for undocumented immigrants. “This law made more crimes, including relatively minor ones like shoplifting and possession of marijuana, grounds for deportation,” attorney Mariela Sagastume told NBC News. “It took away judges’ discretion to consider military service, community ties, family ties and other mitigating factors in deportation cases.”
and then 