This weekend, a decorated Colorado Army veteran who is also a convicted felon’s criss-crossed deportation trail ended up where it began.

Jose Barco’s arrival to Aurora’s U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center Sunday afternoon put yet another question mark on nearly three months of uncertainty during which he was transferred by ICE eight times across three states. An immigration attorney working pro bono filed a motion in U.S. District Court Friday afternoon to have an immigration judge review his case.

Barco was taken into custody in January after being released on parole for good behavior from a 40-year prison sentence after 15 years.

His wife Tia Barco, who in 12 weeks has become somewhat of an expert in immigration law, was afraid to feel any emotion “after the constant chaos” of the last 80-plus days.

“I’m just numb,” she told The Denver Gazette in a text.

Ironically, it was not politicians or news stories or even his family’s intervention that put the reins on Barco’s imminent deportation. It was the Venezuelan immigration agents who didn’t want him in their country.

Thinking he had stood on U.S. soil for the last time, Barco was flown from the Harlingen, Texas airport on April 3 to Honduras with a group of around 30 Venezuelans, he told his wife. There, a plane stood by to take them to the city of Maiquetia in central Venezuela.

However, Venezuelan officials wanted nothing to do with Barco and turned him away, suspicious of his Cuban dialect, Barco reported to his wife. They also questioned his birth certificate as possibly fake.

According to his family, Barco — with only the clothes on his back and a few pieces of ICE-issued underwear in a plastic bag — was sent through the line and rejected at least three times. In the end, he was flown back to Harlingen.

Now, it’s as if the United States does not know what to do with the man who has a violent felony conviction and thus eligible for deportation, but also earned a Purple Heart serving his country and did his time for the crime.

Barco was born in Venezuela to Cuban parents fleeing the Castro regime. When the Barco family was given asylum in Miami, their youngest child, Jose, was four years old.

Tia Barco described it best.

“He is an orphaned man,” she said.

Barco told her that when Venezuelan officials found out that he had no family or friends in Venezuela, “they laughed and said he definitely didn’t want to end up there.”

After the rejection by Venezuela, Barco was sent to the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas. A week later, he spent the night in Alexandria, Louisiana, and Sunday was flown back the Aurora ICE detention facility, the same place ICE agents dropped him off nearly three months ago after picking him up from the Colorado Department of Corrections prison.

Barco was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 50-plus years for firing into a crowd and hitting a pregnant woman.

He is not a citizen of the United States, though he applied for citizenship right after Independence Day, 2006, according to recently unearthed information from a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services report.

“On July 6, 2006, Mr. Barco filed an Application for Naturalization, Form N-400, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,” the report said.

It’s unclear if his paperwork was processed or approved, but he was told by the Army while he was in Baghdad where he served during the “surge” that his application was lost. Instead of giving the oath he prepared for, he could only watch as another soldier was sworn in as an American citizen to the applause and back-claps of his comrades.

His family hopes that a motion filed Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court is the reason he has been returned to Colorado. The motion is a request to reopen an immigration judge’s jurisdiction to make a decision on his removal or to release him.

Barco decided to waive his appeal Feb. 12 and a Colorado immigration judge ordered him deported. The former gunner’s family believes that an untreated traumatic brain injury has left him incapable of making important decisions. He still has migraines, has sensitivity to light and sound and also suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, which was also never medically treated.

Barco’s is one of several high-profile cases tied to President Donald Trump’s plan to implement mass deportations which have woven through the federal courts.

As of March 13, 2025, 32,809 people had been arrested since Trump took office, according to the Department of Homeland Security website.

Of those, more than 14,000 were convicted criminals, nearly 1,000 have pending charges, and only two, including Barco, are veterans with criminal backgrounds. Both men have not yet been deported.

Additionally, two veterans currently on humanitarian parole have received notices of parole revocation, according to Danitza James, an Iraq combat veteran who is president of Repatriate Our Patriots and chair of the League of Latin American Citizens Subcommittee on Deported Veterans.

“For José, going from place-to-place without real answers has been not just destabilizing, it’s been heartbreaking,” said James. “He was a man without a country for most of his life until the day he joined the U.S. Army.”

Barco signed up for service at the age of 17 at the beginning of the Iraq War and was promised U.S. citizenship, but after applying for citizenship between his two tours, the Army misplaced his papers.

Barco was a private with the Charlie Company of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Division — a group of 500 soldiers infamous for being the subjects of a documentary that detailed the trauma of the war-affected returning soldiers.

The battalion accounted for half of Fort Carson’s combat losses.

Barco earned a Purple Heart for lifting a suicide vehicle which exploded off of two men before he realized he was on fire himself. He eventually earned the rank of sergeant. Barco was honorably discharged in 2008 and was diagnosed with PTSD and a Traumatic Brain Injury after two tours during some of the most violent battles of the Iraq War. However his heroism during two Iraq War tours was tarnished when he returned to Fort Carson. On half-a-dozen medications plus alcohol, he shot into a crowd hitting a pregnant woman in the leg during a party in Colorado Springs, was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to more than 50 years. The sentence was later amended to 40 years.

Barco spent 15 years in prison where he taught Math and English to other inmates and was paroled early for good behavior and because, the parole board said, his war experience led to his crime.

He served his country and he served his time, but for immigration attorney James, and a group of family and friends, this latest U-Turn to Colorado could mean weeks more of waiting for inevitable deportation or freedom.

“It’s like a form of double jeopardy,” James said. “He wore our uniform, fought our wars and yet when he stumbled, like many do, he was cast out instead of helped up.”

A Change.org petition has been started for Barco as well as a GoFundMe to help pay for his legal expenses.