Speaking to us from an apartment in San Diego, David Bariu’s American story began more than two decades ago and nearly 10,000 miles away.
“I was born in Nairobi, Kenya,” he told us. “I came here to further my education.”
In 1998, Bariu came to America on a student visa. While here, he says, he was persuaded by an army recruiter to enlist in the army in exchange for free education and U.S. citizenship.
“I was like, okay, that's interesting.”
Bariu joined and served in the U.S. Army and, eventually, the Air Force Reserves.
“For the love of serving the country and for the love or defending the Constitution,” he told reporter Katie LaGrone.
But by 2007, Bariu says he was forced to leave the military altogether after the recruiter who recruited him was court marshalled and, ultimately, found guilty of unlawfully enlisting African national students.
Bariu was among them.
Army discharge papers he provided us show he was honorably discharged for an “erroneous entry.”
Army investigative records he provided also appear to detail how Bariu was one of dozens of Kenyan students recruited as part of a fraudulent enlistment scheme.
According to army records, the recruited students had attained fraudulent work visas in their passports. But in a sworn statement to investigators, Bariu denied knowing he was fraudulently enlisted.
He also told us he never paid any money for a work visa and was never found guilty of any wrongdoing. Bariu believes he was a victim of a recruiter trying to meet a recruitment quota.
“My recruiter was fraudulently recruiting internationals to meet his quota, recruiting quota, to meet his margins,” he told us.
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The U.S. Army has not responded to our repeated requests for comment about the case involving the recruiter and Bariu.
But for Bariu, it’s what happened after he left the military that inspired him to go public with his story.
“It's difficult to explain what reasoning they used to justify my deportation,” he told us.
Bariu, who thought he was legally enlisted when he joined the military, was stripped of his military certifications and VA card and then deported back to Kenya.
But not before he spent a year detained in a Texas immigrant detention center, he told us.
“It didn’t make sense. I was young. I don't know if they were trying to make me give up. I don't know if they were trying to radicalize me and make me fight the system or say bad things about the United States,” he said.
Bariu is among an unknown number of U.S. veterans who honorably served in America’s armed forces, but were then deported back to their home countries without the American citizenship and other benefits they claim they were promised.
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“This problem is so big that the federal government itself doesn't even know the scope of the problem,” explained UC Berkeley law professor Rose Carmen Goldberg.
Goldberg is also director of the Veterans Law Practicum, which recently highlighted the problem of deported U.S. veterans and the issues they face in a recent report titled “Broken Promises.”
“Despite being required to do so, [the government] are not tracking the number of veterans they deport. There are requirements in place stating that military service is supposed to be taken into account during immigration proceedings, but that rule has not been followed,” Goldberg explained.
When asked for a response about deported veterans and the allegation of broken citizenship promises, the Department of Defense referred us to the Veterans Administration.
In a lengthy email, a spokesperson for the Veterans Administration told us, in part, that they are working with the Department of Homeland Security to “identify and prioritize the return of current and former U.S. military members… who were removed from the United States” and help them access benefits including “immigration and naturalization assistance.”
“This is a veteran issue. It's not an immigration issue because we were veterans when we got deported,” said Bariu.
In 2022, 14 years after he was deported, Bariu was allowed back into America through the Immigrant Military Members Veterans Initiative, a new government program to help deported veterans return to the U.S.
A few months later, he finally got the legal U.S. citizenship he said he was promised by the recruiter decades earlier.
“It was overdue. I was happy,” he told us.
Today, the dad of two is going to school to become a nurse but still fighting for his GI benefits. He’s also co-founder of a support group for deported veterans and hopes his story raises awareness about a problem facing some veterans who come to this country to defend it, but feel they’re ignored when they need the saving.
“Deported veterans are dying across the borders. They know about us but when you try to get back the legal way, we have so many blockades and it becomes a complicated mess,” Bariu said.
