## [Stars and Stripes:](<Former Fort Carson Iraq war veteran gives up the fight to stay in the US>) Former Fort Carson Iraq war veteran gives up the fight to stay in the US and accepts deportation
>>> Jose Barco, a decorated U.S. Army veteran once based out of Fort Carson who served two tours in Iraq during some of the most intense fighting but later served time for a felony conviction, has become a casualty of a different kind of war.
At an immigration hearing Wednesday morning, he told Assistant Immigration Judge Matthew Kaufman that he was not interested in appealing his deportation case after an immigration attorney gave him a 2% chance of winning a case, which could take several more years and and thousands of dollars to fight.
**"I'm disillusioned and tired. Send me to a country that will accept me since my country doesn't," he told his brother, Ray in a phone call late Wednesday.**
Barco, after serving 15 years in prison for a felony conviction, was taken into custody last month by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement officers because his citizenship papers, which were supposed to be processed while he was in the Army, were lost.
Jose Barco-Chirino is the son of a Cuban political prisoner who protested against Communism.
He was born when the family fled to Venezuela and granted asylum in America at the age of 5.
Between tours he filled out citizenship papers, but they disappeared.
Upon his return to Fort Carson, with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Traumatic Brain Injury, and reliant on half a dozen medications and drinking, he had a flashback one night, shot into a crowd and injured a pregnant woman in the leg.
Convicted and sentenced to 52 years, he was given early parole and released just days after President Donald Trump was sworn in Jan. 20. A team of ICE agents were waiting for him with an open seat in their vehicle to take him to another cell, this time to await his fate.
>>> Jose Barco, a decorated U.S. Army veteran once based out of Fort Carson who served two tours in Iraq during some of the most intense fighting but later served time for a felony conviction, has become a casualty of a different kind of war.
At an immigration hearing Wednesday morning, he told Assistant Immigration Judge Matthew Kaufman that he was not interested in appealing his deportation case after an immigration attorney gave him a 2% chance of winning a case, which could take several more years and and thousands of dollars to fight.
**"I'm disillusioned and tired. Send me to a country that will accept me since my country doesn't," he told his brother, Ray in a phone call late Wednesday.**
Barco, after serving 15 years in prison for a felony conviction, was taken into custody last month by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement officers because his citizenship papers, which were supposed to be processed while he was in the Army, were lost.
Jose Barco-Chirino is the son of a Cuban political prisoner who protested against Communism.
He was born when the family fled to Venezuela and granted asylum in America at the age of 5.
Between tours he filled out citizenship papers, but they disappeared.
Upon his return to Fort Carson, with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Traumatic Brain Injury, and reliant on half a dozen medications and drinking, he had a flashback one night, shot into a crowd and injured a pregnant woman in the leg.
Convicted and sentenced to 52 years, he was given early parole and released just days after President Donald Trump was sworn in Jan. 20. A team of ICE agents were waiting for him with an open seat in their vehicle to take him to another cell, this time to await his fate.
