Veterans are being deported from the United States for criminal convictions they sustained decades ago, and the federal government is failing its mission to protect them. Draconian immigration laws tied to criminal convictions, a sustained uptick in immigration enforcement, and the elimination of a longstanding statutory provision protected by the Sixth Amendment that allowed a criminal sentencing judge to make a binding recommendation against deportation for a conviction have rendered noncitizen veterans vulnerable to deportation. The Supreme Court decision Padilla v. Kentucky revived the Sixth Amendment’s role in the intersection of criminal convictions and immigration consequences, but with limited and without retroactive application. The two decades between the elimination of the judicial recommendation against deportation and Padilla created a constitutional vacuum around the revamped immigration consequences of criminal convictions, a “deconstitutionalized zone.”

In this Article I examine the creation of the “deconstitutionalized zone” and its unique impact on noncitizen veterans whose service in the military exposed them to an increased likelihood of (1) contact with the criminal justice system as well as (2) executive interference in their efforts to become U.S. citizens. I argue that current exercises of discretion by the executive branch to help noncitizen veterans in the “deconstitutionalized zone” are insufficient, and that the executive’s proportional and adequate response is to allow its former soldiers caught in this zone to seek naturalization as if they were applying at the time of discharge from the military, that is, nunc pro tunc.