Ivan Ocon desperately wants to return to the United States, but can’t.
Share This StoryTweetShareSharePinEmailCommentCIUDAD JUÁREZ - Ivan Ocon was born in this Mexican border city, but it’s hard to imagine anyone feeling less at home in the place of their birth than he does.
“I don’t belong here,” he says. “My whole life was over there — all my friends, all my family. Everything is over there. That’s where I should be.” “If we’re veterans we should be treated like veterans,” Ocon says. “We should be able to get citizenship. Yeah, we broke the law, but at the same time, once a U.S. citizen pays his debt to society he goes back on the street.
Ocon’s father is a U.S. citizen, he says. That made him eligible for citizenship if certain conditions had been met. But they weren’t. Two years after Ocon moved to El Paso, his mom left his stepdad when “he started cheating with the babysitter,” Ivan says. His mother remarried when he was 17, marrying a U.S. citizen, which qualified her to become a citizen. She became a citizen two weeks after he turned 18. If she’d become a citizen before he turned 18, that would have made him eligible for citizenship, too.Serving the United StatesOcon graduated from Oñate High School in 1996 and immediately joined the Army, inspired by all the war movies he watched growing up.
When the recruiter told him that, he replied, “Oh, that’s cool,” but thought nothing more about it and didn’t investigate that until several years later. After his second reenlistment, he was sent to Fort Bliss. He still had the same girlfriend he had in high school and, when he returned to the area, she relocated from California to study nursing at New Mexico State University. They lived in Las Cruces. Eventually, she got pregnant.
He also soured on the military. His unit returned from the Middle East in May. His wife gave birth to their daughter in June. He applied for financial assistance from the Army, but was denied. He also became disillusioned with his fellow soldiers who didn’t take the military as seriously as he did. Ocon had received two honorable discharges, but this time he received a “general discharge ,” a less favorable discharge that is given if a service member commits “minor disciplinary infractions,” according to the Veterans Administration.
Ocon insists he wasn’t involved in any way in the drug deal or kidnapping, but knew what his brother was doing. He says he advised him not to do it. Ocon says his sentence was reduced by a year for good behavior, but he never gained his freedom in this country because he was turned over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement upon his release and the government began deportation proceedings against him.
He still had family in Juárez, so he took three buses to get there, spending about half his cash. He moved in with his grandmother. He slept on a cot in a small opening between two bedrooms. He lived there for about a year. He hasn’t seen his daughter since 2008. She never visited him in prison. They used to talk by phone several times a week but that diminished as she grew older. She hasn’t visited him in Juárez, though he hopes she will soon.
Through the Tijuana shelter, he learned about Jose Francisco Lopez, a deported Vietnam veteran who opened a shelter in his Juárez home in 2017. Lopez was deported in 2003 after serving time in prison on drug charges. The shelter also provides help to two dozen or so deported veterans who live in Juárez. It collects donated food, clothing and other materials that it provides to vets in need. It sponsors meals for veterans on Thanksgiving and other holidays.Ocon helps veterans complete and file paperwork necessary for them to obtain veterans benefits. They stage events on military-related holidays such as Memorial Day to raise awareness of deported veterans.
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