Who is Jose Barco? Army veteran, 39, who lived in US for 35 years faces deportation

A US Army veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq is facing deportation after having lived in the United States since he was four years old. Jose Barco, who is not a US citizen but has served in the military, is being held in a Texas detention centre. He has lived in the US for 35 years.

Who is Jose Barco? Army veteran, 39, who lived in US for 35 years faces deportation (Pixabay – representational image)

Barco, 39, has a criminal record, and completed his 15-year prison sentence the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Immigration officials recently tried to deport him, but Venezuelan authorities turned him away. Anna Stout, former mayor of Grand Junction, Colorado, who is helping the Barco family, told Newsweek that Barco “is virtually stateless at this time, with his country of birth rejecting his admission and the country he shed blood for ordering him removed.”

Who is Jose Barco?

Barco was born in Venezuela and came to the US when he was just four years old. He is now married to Tia Barco, a US citizen, and has a 15-year-old daughter. Barco’s father fled Cuba after being released as a political prisoner.

Tia recently revealed that her husband has never met his daughter outside of prison, but the pair “had hoped” for it. She added that even though they had been married for 15 years, he had not applied for a green card through marriage “due to his conviction.”

Barco, who joined the US armed forces at a young age, was initially deployed to western Iraq in 2004. In Iraq, he saw combat with insurgent groups and suffered several injuries from blasts and collisions. Later, he was diagnosed with a TBI, NPR reported.

Barco returned to Iraq in 2006 after one of his commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel Michael ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, helped him fill out the forms to become a naturalised citizen. In a memo to immigration officials, Hutchinson wrote in February 2025, “I distinctly remember Jose Barco completing and submitting his application for United States citizenship…At some point the packet was lost and we have not been able to find a chain of custody document.”

When Barco was 23 in 2008, he was honourably discharged from the military with serious TBI symptoms. He served in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment. Previously, he was stationed at Fort Carson.

Why was Jose Barco in prison?

Barco opened fire on a house party crowd in Colorado Springs on April 25, 2008, hitting a 19-year-old woman in the leg, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. At the time, the victim was five months pregnant. Barco was convicted of two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of felony menacing. While he was initially sentenced to 52 years in prison, the sentence was later reduced to 40 years in 2014.

Tia revealed that Barco served 15 years in prison in Colorado. He first served at Buena Vista Correctional Complex, and the last five years in “an incentive program at CSP Colorado State Prison [Penitentiary],” she added. Tia said her husband was released on parole on January 21, 2025, and was “immediately detained.”

The ICE reportedly detained Barco after he was released from prison, and took him to a Colorado detention centre first, and then to two different centres in Texas. At present, he is being held in El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, Tia and Stout claimed.

Barco was deported to Venezuela via Honduras in late March, but was stopped and turned back to Texas. Stout said that Barco “was the only detained person on the plane that returned to the U.S.”

“Deportation plans are nebulous at this time and Jose and his team have not been given information about what US immigration authorities plan to do about his deportation order, given the fact Venezuelan authorities declined to take him last week,” Stout told Newsweek.

Several people are supporting Barco and have been trying to secure an attorney for him. However, Stout said this has been difficult as “Jose has encountered multiple barriers to retaining an attorney due primarily to the frequent and sudden transfers among ICE/GEO facilities, impeding any attorney’s access to him.”

In March, Barco told The Denver Gazette, “I’m not Venezuelan even though I was born in Venezuela. I’m not Cuban either because I wasn’t born in Cuba, but my parents are Cuban. I’ve lived in this country since I was 4 years old. But to them, I’m not an American. I don’t know what I am.”