Immigrant GI booted out of Army at Fort Sam

[Elderberry]

Houston Chronicle By Sig Christenson August 3, 2018

Yea Ji Sea, an Army specialist from South Korea, was discharged Friday at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston after 4.5 years of service, abruptly ending her military career before she could achieve her goal of becoming an Army doctor.

Sea left the post fearful she would be met by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Clearing that hurdle without incident, she pondered her next move. She has been taking premed courses in San Antonio and is set to complete final exams next week.

“Right now I’m just worried about if I should take a flight home or drive home. I don’t know what’s safer,” Sea said, explaining that she wants to avoid ICE, which has detained other discharged soldiers, as she heads to Los Angeles. “I’ve been trying to think of the safest route to go back home. I’m going to give myself a couple of more days to think about it.”

Sea, 29, of Gardena, Calif., entered the Army under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program. Now shuttered, MAVNI recruited noncitizens with critically needed language and culture skills from 2009 through last year with the promise of granting them citizenship. Though all came in as enlistees, some later became officers.

Defense officials killed MAVNI last year on the basis of potential threats to national security by troops in the program, but a study by military contractor RAND was skeptical, saying it was “unable to estimate the specific security risk” by those in it. RAND called for a modest expansion of the program.

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