Jermaine Thomas, the son of a U.S. citizen and military veteran—but without citizenship to any country—was deported to Jamaica in late May. His case, recently highlighted by the Austin Chronicle, reflects a growing number of deportations involving veterans or their relatives under the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement.
Thomas was born on a U.S. army base in Germany to an American father who was originally Jamaican. Despite having no citizenship in the U.S., Germany, or Jamaica, he was deported to Jamaica—a country he had never visited. Thomas had previously been the subject of a Supreme Court case due to his unusual legal status.
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The federal government argued that birth on a US military base does not grant automatic citizenship. His father, they claimed, did not meet the legal requirements for transmitting citizenship at the time of his birth. Although Thomas petitioned for a review, the Supreme Court denied it, citing this technicality.
Speaking from Jamaica, Thomas said:
“If you’re in the US army, and the army deploys you somewhere, and you’ve gotta have your child over there – and your child makes a mistake after you pass away – and you put your life on the line for this country, are you going to be OK with them just kicking your child out of the country?”
He added, reflecting on his father’s service:
“It was just Memorial Day. Y’all are disrespecting his service and his legacy.”
In recent months, an increasing number of U.S. military veterans and their family members have been detained or deported. This includes emotional and controversial cases that have sparked public backlash.
A U.S. Marine veteran told CNN he felt “betrayed” after immigration agents arrested his father—an undocumented immigrant from Mexico—while he was working a landscaping job in Santa Ana, California.
In another incident, ICE detained the breastfeeding wife of a Marine Corps veteran despite her ongoing legal residency process. She was separated from her three-month-old daughter, according to the Associated Press.
The Trump administration has been pressuring ICE to ramp up deportations. In a May meeting, White House officials reportedly instructed ICE to reach a target of at least 3,000 arrests per day, aiming for 1 million arrests annually.
Following this directive, ICE has increased enforcement operations, including arrests of undocumented immigrants without any criminal record. Being undocumented remains a civil—not criminal—offense.
According to a Guardian analysis, ICE held over 11,700 people without any criminal charges or convictions as of mid-June—a 1,271% increase from numbers prior to Trump’s second term.
In March, ICE arrested 58-year-old Alma Bowman, the daughter of a U.S. Navy veteran. She had lived in Georgia since she was 10, after being born in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Her permanent residency had been revoked due to a 20-year-old misdemeanor, leaving her in prolonged legal limbo.
Bowman was previously detained at an ICE facility in Georgia under scrutiny for allegedly performing non-consensual gynecological procedures on women. She had been a whistleblower during the 2020 investigation into those practices and said she had always believed she was a U.S. citizen.
In another case, Sae Joon Park, a U.S. Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient, left the country voluntarily for South Korea after receiving a deportation order. His removal stemmed from old drug-related charges tied to an addiction he developed after being wounded in combat during the 1980s.
“I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Park told NPR.
“That blows me away – like, [it is] a country that I fought for.”
