He served his country, then he served time. Where does Jose Barco go now?
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DENVER — José Barco, a decorated war veteran, walked out of the Colorado State Penitentiary January 21, 2025, after spending 15 years — a vast majority of his adult life — behind bars. He planned to reunite with his wife, Tia, and their teenage daughter, and travel to Florida for a family reunion.
He never got the chance.
Federal immigration officers met Barco, who was born in Venezuela to Cuban parents and moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 4 years old, outside of the prison. They put him in a van and drove to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Aurora.
That was nearly four months ago. Since then, the Purple Heart recipient who served two tours in Iraq has spent time in at least five different detention facilities in Colorado and Texas not knowing when — or if — he will be able to see his family again.
José Barco is not a U.S. citizen. He applied for citizenship between tours in the summer of 2006 while he was stationed at Fort Carson. Barco’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Michael Hutchinson, helped him complete his citizenship application.
His application “should have been approved by the end of calendar year 2006,” Hutchinson wrote in a memo to federal immigration officials. “At some point the packet was lost and we have not been able to find a chain of custody document."
In 2009, a jury found Barco guilty of attempted murder after he opened fire at a Colorado Springs house party. One of the gunshots hit a 19-year-old pregnant woman in the leg.
Initially sentenced to 52 years in prison, Barco earned parole after 15 years for good behavior. He taught English and mathematics while incarcerated.
Tia Barco attributes the shooting, in part, to mental trauma José Barco suffered during combat in Iraq — trauma that her husband did not receive proper treatment for, she said.
“It was such a taboo to speak on so he wasn't getting help,” she said. “They were just throwing medications at them. They didn't have the technology they have now to correctly address [traumatic brain injury], so I just always wonder who he could've been had he been correctly assessed by the VA.”
Initially sentenced to 52 years in prison, Barco earned parole after 15 years for good behavior. He taught English and mathematics while incarcerated.
Barco was part of a group of Venezuelan nationals who earlier this month boarded a deportation flight from a detention facility in Texas to Venezuela. Tia Barco told Rocky Mountain PBS that when her husband’s flight landed in Honduras en route to Venezuela, the Venezuelan authorities refused to take him, saying his birth certificate looked like a forgery.
He was turned away, forced to fly back to the United States with the ICE agents, Tia Barco said. Immigration officials placed José Barco in custody at the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, about five hours from where his wife lives outside of Houston.
Rocky Mountain PBS reached out to the ICE Office of Public Affairs, but did not hear back by publication time.
“He has no ties to Venezuela or support system,” wrote Danitza James, a two-tour Army combat veteran and member of the League of United Latin American Citizens. She prepared a document with a background and timeline of Barco’s case that his supporters are using to advocate for his release from ICE custody.
“His only connection to Venezuela is being born there while his parents fled Cuba as refugees,” James wrote.
Barco was once again transferred Sunday, April 13, back to the ICE facility in Aurora. James described his transfer as "another move without notification or reason. "
Tia Barco does not know what comes next for her husband. The country he has lived in since he was a preschooler — the country that gave him a Purple Heart — wants to deport him. But the country of his birth won’t take him.
Where does José Barco go from here?
A video of José Barco at Forward Operating Base Falcon outside of Baghdad, Iraq. Video courtesy Tia Barco
“I wish I had some stuff to work towards,” Tia Barco said. “This is something new for us to navigate and honestly we have no support from congressmen or representatives to help us navigate this.”
“Everyone agrees that we should get violent criminals off our streets,” Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat representing Aurora, said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) in which he shared a clip of a Joe Rogan podcast where the influential host called the treatment of some migrants “horrific.”
“But under Trump’s immigration orders, innocent people — including Americans who are here legally — have been detained & deported to foreign prisons. That’s outrageous and wrong,” Crow wrote.
FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy organization, estimates about 45,000 immigrants are actively serving in the military. However, the group also reported that the naturalization rate for veterans is dropping. Robert Vivar, the co-director of the Tijuana, Mexico-based Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center told the New York Times in 2021 that the United States has deported at least 1,000 military veterans.
A spokesperson for Rep. Crow said the congressman’s office opened an inquiry into José Barco’s case while he was detained in Aurora’s ICE facility. After Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Mathew Kaufman, who is based in Aurora, ordered Barco’s deportation, Barco chose not to appeal.
"I'm disillusioned and tired. Send me to a country that will accept me since my country doesn't," Barco told his brother, Ray, according to reporting from Carol McKinley at the Denver Gazette.
Barco was then transferred to Texas, outside of Crow’s jurisdiction, and the congressman’s office closed its case.
Barco’s family and friends are trying to end his deportation proceedings with the hopes he can receive medical attention for PTSD in the U.S.
The unpredictability of Barco’s case is emblematic of President Donald Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown, which Trump billed as the “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
So far, that operation has included mistaken deportations, the detainment of American citizens and the revocation of visas for hundreds of international students across the country, including in Colorado.
The American Immigration Council, a nonprofit and nonpartisan advocacy organization, criticized the “indiscriminate nature” of the president’s immigration arrests.
Barco’s story is beginning to make national headlines, but other cases involving Venezuelan nationals have received more attention.
In March, immigration agents deported hundreds of Venezuelans who were in federal custody using the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798 that was most recently invoked to intern Japanese, German and Italian immigrants during World War II.
One of the men deported was Andry José Hernández Romero, a makeup artist and asylum seeker who was initially detained because of his tattoos, which the Trump administration considered evidence of gang affiliation. Hernández did not receive a chance to defend himself against the allegations of belonging to a gang. Immigration officers sent him to a Salvadoran mega prison, where he remains.
The Trump administration is sending undocumented individuals, particularly Venezuelan nationals suspected of gang activity, to a mega-prison in El Salvador known as CECOT, even if they don’t have a connection to the country.
Ryan Krebbs, who served with Barco as the company medic and now lives in Denver, hopes his friend avoids that fate.
Krebbs and Barco met as young men in 2003 while they were awaiting deployment to Iraq. Krebbs understands that Barco’s conviction for a violent crime makes him an unsympathetic figure to some.
“I sympathize with José just because I know how awful Carson was,” said Krebbs, in reference to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. “I know they were understaffed when it came to mental health.”
José Barco was raised in Miami. He joined the military when he was 17 years old. He deployed to Iraq as a private in 2004 as part of Charlie Company, from the 1st Battalion of the 506th Regiment.
During Barco’s first tour, his platoon, which included Krebbs, served on “route Michigan,” the main highway between Fallujah and Ramadi, an area known for intense and frequent combat.
A car bomb explosion in November 2004 killed one soldier and wounded seven others, including Barco, Krebbs said.
“The car bomb was a mass casualty event, and it was the first time I'd ever experienced anything like that,” Krebbs said. “I don't remember all of it. Probably a self-defense mechanism thing.”
Barco received immediate treatment for the burns, but not for the head trauma he experienced as a result of the explosion. According to “The Wounded Platoon,” a documentary from Frontline, Barco noticed ringing in his ears months after the explosion. It was only then that military doctors at Fort Carson diagnosed him with a head injury.
Krebbs said that Barco received an offer to retire with 100% disability coverage. He declined, choosing to deploy for a second time.
“I mean, there were a lot of guys that were citizens that were coming up with ways to get out of being there for their first tour,” said Krebbs, who recently visited Barco when he was first detained in Aurora. “Barco wasn’t doing that; he's an honorable guy, you know?
Krebbs and Barco’s second tour was in Dora, outside of Baghdad. “Those places were not friendly,” he said. “Not easy tours.”
Speaking to Frontline, Barco recalled the culture of violence that characterized his platoon's time in Iraq.
Speaking to Frontline, Barco recalled the culture of violence that characterized his platoon's time in Iraq.
“We were trigger happy,” Barco said. “We'd open up on anything. They even didn't have to be armed. We were keeping scores."
The violence and trauma from the tours didn’t stay in Iraq. Three members of Barco and Krebb’s platoon were convicted of murder or attempted murder after returning to civilian life. Another was charged with assaulting his wife.
Fort Carson was subject of a military study after 10 soldiers committed or were involved in homicides between 2005 and 2008. Then-Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker told reporters the Army found “no single factor or grouping of factors” that explained the violence coming out of Fort Carson.
Krebbs said the military’s awareness and treatment for things like traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and PTSD has improved since then.
“They seem to be moving in the right direction with those things,” Krebbs said. “Now, if they if they cut funding or if they cut personnel levels and drop them to the levels they were before, then we're going to see the same thing happening over again, where there's not enough capacity for mental health and TBI and all these things that our soldiers are coming back from war with, and they're not being treated.”
"They just throw medications at you," Barco told Frontline.
"They just throw medications at you," Barco told Frontline.
Tia Barco hasn’t seen her husband in person since 2017. She was able to speak to him via tablet when he was transferred to one of the detention facilities in Texas.
If the U.S. isn’t an option, Tia Barco wants to see her husband sent to Mexico, where she said the health care and quality of life would be better.
If the U.S. isn’t an option, Tia Barco wants to see her husband sent to Mexico, where she said the health care and quality of life would be better.
“That’s part of the reason I’ve gotten a passport now,” Krebbs said. “I'm ready to go whenever he gets deported. A couple of us are. We want to make sure that he lands on his feet.”
Tia Barco, Krebbs and others are hoping Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, will pardon Barco, which would allow him to re-apply for citizenship. José Barco’s conviction for attempted murder bars him from obtaining citizenship.
A spokesperson for the governor said Polis has not yet received a pardon application from Barco.
“Governor Polis accepts clemency applications on a rolling basis, but applications must be submitted by March 1, 2026 in order to be evaluated during this gubernatorial administration and this individual has not applied,” the spokesperson said. “The Governor takes clemency seriously and understands the weighty responsibility that comes with it, and he evaluates each clemency application carefully and weighs individual circumstances.”
Krebbs visited José Barco at the Aurora ICE facility earlier this year. They spoke over the phone, through glass.
“I didn't know that there would be people there with their babies, you know, sitting on the glass so that their loved ones can see the newborn child,” Krebbs said. “There was a few people like that in there.”
“Just a very eye-opening and heartbreaking thing to see, how we treat people.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Correction: This story was updated Friday, April 11 at 10:55 p.m. to correct a mistake in the first paragraph. José Barco was released from the Colorado State Penitentiary. A previous version of the story said Barco was released from the Buena Vista Correctional Complex, where he served most of his prison sentence.
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