Salon: Dearly Deported (Dead GI's dad deported to Mexico

Just months after Zeferino Colunga Sr. lost his GI son in Iraq, the government arrested him and sent him back to Mexico.

U.S. Army soldier Zeferino Colunga Jr. died four months ago from a mysterious illness he contracted while serving in Iraq and was buried with full honors in a Texas cemetery. Last week, with the family still in mourning, the soldier's father was deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant. Now family members wonder if the deportation of Zeferino Colunga Sr. was connected to their public demand for an independent investigation into the young soldier's death.

The son's passing, and now the father's deportation, have shocked and saddened many in the small Texas community of Bellville, 60 miles west of Houston, where the Colungas have lived for nearly 20 years. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security insists the death and the deportation were completely unrelated. And a review of the facts suggests the family may simply be suffering from a cruel twist of fate. But even the Austin County, Texas, sheriff who handled the case doesn't think it's fair that the still-grieving father was deported so soon after his son was buried.

"Sometimes I see things that I don't totally agree with even though I'm a lawman doing my job, and this is one of those times," says Sheriff DeWayne Burger. "Maybe my patriotism gets the best of me, but the man gave up his only son to serve the United States, and now we're deporting him?"

Colunga's strange death made headlines this summer, coming amid a rash of mysterious pneumonia-type illnesses that struck more than 100 soldiers serving in Iraq as well as Southwest Asia. Some have suggested the cases are tied to the military's controversial anthrax vaccine program.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/12/11/soldier/index.html

thanks for your kid, now back to Mexico.

U$ imperialistic behavior!
And the guest workers in WWII were never paid the SS they were promised and Cardenas gave permission in WWII for Mexicans to join the US Army when the US asked for help and they got dickshit too.

that if it had happened under Clinton's watch, Rush and company would be screaming 24/7 about it from the tops of their lungs.

Not a peep from those blowhards, I bet.

won't buy you a cup of coffee.

Don't expect anything for your service or sacrifice. You'll be very dissappointed. It is right to expect better treatment, but you won't get it.