A post shared on X claims that 94,000 veterans have been deported since 1996.
Happy Veterans Day to the estimated 94,000 veterans deported since 1996 by the same country they fought and bled for.
Bring them home. (🧵1/4) pic.twitter.com/M79KKQrMtE
— reb (@rebmasel) November 12, 2024
Verdict: False
There are estimates that up to 94,000 non-citizen veterans have not been naturalized, which could leave some of them at risk of deportation. However, it does not mean that 94,000 veterans have been deported since 1996.
Fact Check:
Social media users are claiming that 94,000 veterans have been deported since 1996. One user, posting a video, wrote, “Happy Veterans Day to the estimated 94,000 veterans deported since 1996 by the same country they fought and bled for. Bring them home.”
This claim is false. An X user named @ThatsMauvelous or Mauv first fact-checked the claim in a thread that has since received over 342,000 views.
The person who originally made the video later linked sources to the 94,000 number, such as a 2024 Berkeley Law report. The article, though, does not state that 94,000 veterans have been deported.
Instead, it states, “As a result, no firm data currently exists on the total number of veterans who have been deported over the years. Some estimates place the number of veterans deported or at risk of deportation as high as 94,000.” The report links to a National Immigration Forum piece.
The source for that figure is a 2018 Immigration Forum report that states 94,000 veterans have not been naturalized. This number is based on a Migration Policy Institute article, though the numbers have since been updated for 2022 figures.
“That number is erroneous. Our resource that you’ve linked to notes that the number of noncitizen veterans was, at that time, 94,000. But not having citizenship does not necessarily mean ‘deported or at risk of deportation,’ as the Berkeley Law piece reads, and it definitely does not mean they’ve been deported,” Dan Gordon, a spokesperson for Immigration Forum, told Check Your Fact.
Rose Goldberg, a Veterans Law Practicum lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law, told Check Your Fact in an email that “Berkeley Law report does not say that 94,000 veterans have been deported.”
“Rather, the report clearly says that ‘no firm data currently exists on the total number of veterans who have been deported over the years.’ Likewise, the 94,000 estimate figure in the report is not the number of veterans deported. It speaks to the fact that of the estimated 94,000 veterans who are not U.S. citizens, some are at risk of deportation due to not having the protections of citizenship and the (unknown) number of veterans who have been deported are part of that number as they are by definition not U.S. citizens,” Goldberg said.
A March 2021 Gov Exec article stated that “at least 92 US military veterans were deported between 2013 and 2018.” An Immigration Customs Enforcement spokesperson provided Check Your Fact with data that showed at least 60 “US Forces Non-Citizens” were deported between FY 2018 and FY 2024.
Screenshot/ICE
Based on available information, it appears that more than 100 veterans have been deported since 2013. This is much different from 94,000.
PBS SoCal reported in 2021 that up to 94,000 veterans have been deported since 1996. This was repeated in a Nov. 2024 Fox 5 San Diego article. (RELATED: Will Trump Return To The White House Before January 20, 2025?)
One PBS SoCal spokesperson referred Check Your Fact to a publicist for the film “American Exile,” which had the information. Another PBS SoCal spokesperson told Check Your Fact that the article was written by a freelancer and forwarded this reporter’s information to the freelancer.
The freelancer did not reach out to Check Your Fact. Check Your Fact reached out to the publication that the freelancer works for. This publication did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
