US Army veteran pardoned for crimes that led to his self-deportation

Purple Heart Recipient Pardoned in New York After Year-Long Exile in South Korea

Activelifezero.com – A 57-year-old Korean-born veteran of the United States Army received a gubernatorial pardon on Friday, wiping away two state convictions that ultimately forced him into exile more than a year ago. Sae Joon Park, who earned a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in combat, now holds legal grounds to seek vacatur of his removal order and potentially return to the country where he has lived since childhood.

The pardon, issued by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, erased two entries on Park’s record: a 2009 conviction for second-degree bail jumping and a 2007 conviction for third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Both charges stemmed from a chain of events that began with post-traumatic stress disorder following his service in Panama and escalated through a brief period of drug use and a missed court date.

“I still cannot believe this has happened. I am incredibly grateful to Governor Hochul for giving me this chance and for recognizing that I am more than the mistakes I made many years ago,” Park said in a statement released through his attorney, Danicole Ramos.

From Panama to Exile

Park arrived in the United States at age seven, traveling alone from South Korea after his parents’ divorce to reunite with his mother in Miami. He eventually settled in Southern California and enlisted in the military upon graduating from high school. In 1989, he deployed with the US invasion of Panama, where a firefight left him shot twice — once in the spine and once in the lower back. The Purple Heart, awarded to service members wounded or killed in action, recognized those injuries.

Back in civilian life, Park struggled with what he would later identify as PTSD. To manage the pain, he turned to drugs. In 2007, New York police arrested him while he was purchasing a controlled substance. Convicted of possession, he entered probation with court-ordered drug testing. Fearing he would fail a test, he fled to Hawaii to stay with family, missing a scheduled court appearance. US marshals eventually tracked him down at his relatives’ door. He turned himself in, was convicted of second-degree bail jumping — a classification that makes it an aggravated felony under federal immigration law — and served a prison sentence in New York before his release in 2011.

The Immigration Trap

Court records obtained by his attorney show that an immigration judge had issued a removal order against Park the year before his prison release. When he walked out of the facility in 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were already waiting. He spent six months in ICE detention before being released under a deferred action on his removal order, a form of prosecutorial discretion that postponed deportation without conferring lawful status. Ramos previously described the basis for that deferral as the “equities of being a Purple Heart veteran.”

His childhood green card was revoked. He was barred from leaving the country. But he was permitted to stay and work legally. For roughly 15 years, he did exactly that — until a routine immigration check-in last June. According to Ramos, an ICE officer cited the old removal order and threatened to handcuff and detain him on the spot. A deal was struck: Park would wear an ankle monitor and self-deport within three weeks. He chose to leave for South Korea, the country he had abandoned as a child.

National Attention and the Path to Pardon

Park’s situation became a flashpoint in December, when lawmakers pressed then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a tense congressional hearing about noncitizen veterans swept into President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Park was among several such veterans who self-deported or were expelled from the country they had served. His case gave a human face to a policy question that had been debated in abstract terms: what happens when the nation’s immigration machinery collides with its obligation to those who bled for it?

Hochul’s pardon, issued alongside five other recipients, carried a statement emphasizing rehabilitation and second chances.

“[They] have displayed positive changes in their lives and will dedicate themselves to bettering their communities — they earned their second chance through rehabilitation and can now establish their futures once again,” the governor’s office said.

What the Pardon Does — and Does Not — Do

The pardon does not function as a one-way ticket home. Ramos cautioned that it gives Park grounds to petition for vacatur of his removal order, but the timeline for any actual return remains uncertain. She declined to speculate on how long the process might take.

“This pardon represents a tremendous step forward and gives Mr. Park and his family renewed hope that, after more than a year of separation, he may one day be able to return to the country he has called home since childhood and for which he put his life on the line,” Ramos said.

The Department of Homeland Security has not yet commented on the pardon. When asked about Park’s case previously, the department pointed to his criminal record as justification for the deportation action. The pardon now complicates that position, removing the state-level convictions that had anchored the removal order’s factual predicate.

For Park, who has spent more than a year in the country of his birth, the pardon marks the beginning of a legal process whose endpoint he can only hope for. The Purple Heart on his record remains. What changed on Friday is the weight the state of New York places on the two convictions that once made him, in the eyes of immigration law, a removable alien rather than a veteran coming home.