Military

DoD Might Renege On Enlistment Contracts For Foreign-Born Service Members

About 1,000 foreign-born service members who enlisted under the Delayed Entry Program but whose visas have expired could have their military contracts canceled and face deportation under a proposed Department of Defense policy, the Washington Post reports.

In his first dispatch as a reporter for the newspaper, Army veteran Alex Horton obtained an “undated action memo” for Secretary of Defense James Mattis that details “potential security threats of immigrants recruited in a program designed to award fast-tracked citizenship in exchange for urgently needed medical and language skills.”

Under that Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program, the U.S. armed services have recruited more than 10,000 “legal aliens” with critical mission skills like medicine or cultural and linguistic expertise since 2009. But the DoD memo reveals that since last year, Pentagon planners have been putting those service members, as well as new MAVNI recruits, through an extreme vetting process that’s drained “Army fiscal and manpower resources.”