Exclusive: In his first interview, Chong Kim describes the crushing prospect of being deported to South Korea, a country he hasn’t lived in since the age of five

Chong Kim gathered paperwork demonstrating his recent accomplishments and headed to a federal building in Portland to meet an immigration officer. It was 5 April, and the 41-year-old housekeeper thought he was heading to a routine check-in.

The officer, however, wasn’t interested in his achievements. The Oregon man quickly learned he was facing possible deportation to his native South Korea, a country he left at five years old.

“It frightens me to think about,” said Kim, wearing an orange jail uniform, seated in a small windowless room at a detention center in Tacoma, Washington, one of the country’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities and the site of frequent protests. “How impossible a task would it be to rebuild my life from scratch? I would feel like I’m utterly alone.”

The deportation case, based on an old criminal record, is particularly disturbing to his friends and family given that Kim is an Iraq war veteran who struggled with drug abuse after his deployment, but had recently turned his life around.

“It’s hard to imagine a more clear example of someone being a part of a country than putting their life on the line for it,” said Tim Warden-Hertz, Kim’s lawyer and a directing attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. “There’s this hidden process of deporting veterans.”

His detention comes a time of increasing alarm across the country about the devastating impacts of Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, which has affected refugees who fled persecution, victims of violence, undocumented people brought to the US as children, and parents seeking green cards, among others.

And the push to deport Kim has shined a light on the lack of immigration protections for non-citizen military veterans and the severe consequences for immigrants caught up in the criminal justice system – even after they’ve rehabilitated their lives.

Kim had a green card and was legally admitted to the US in 1981 with his parents. He grew up in Portland and worked for UPS and his family’s convenience store before enlisting in the military in 2005.

It’s hard to imagine a more clear example of someone being a part of a country than putting their life on the line Tim Warden-Hertz, lawyer for Chong Kim

The US was the only home Kim knew, and he decided it was his duty to serve.

“It felt like something I should do, particularly at a time of a war,” he told the Guardian in his first interview about his case. Kim said that joining the military was one of the best decisions of his life.

“It gave me the ability to stand up tall and say, ‘You’re just as American as anyone else.’”

Deployed to Iraq in 2009, he served as a driver of a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (M-Rap) vehicle. On one mission, he helped save an Iraqi national whose vehicle was on fire, according to an army member’s testimony.

After being honorably discharged in 2010, Kim lived with severe drug addiction and eventually became homeless, sometimes shoplifting food, he recalled. In 2013, he was convicted of first-degree burglary after he was caught trying to steal groceries. He was subsequently detained by Ice and threatened with deportation, but ultimately released.

Chong Kim in the US military. Photograph: Courtesy of Chong Kim

He did not, however, get the help he needed. One day in February 2016, Kim said, he was high and bored and filled an empty beer bottle with gasoline, lit it on fire and threw it at a brick wall behind a store. He said he thought no one was watching, but someone called police and he was charged with felony arson.

“I was not in the right state of mind,” he recalled.

His attorneys argued that the act was in effect a careless prank and that he had no intention of hurting anyone. There were no injuries and only minor damage. Kim pleaded guilty to attempted arson and was sentenced to treatment. He entered a residential substance abuse program run by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) last August and successfully completed it in January, records show.

“It was the first time in my life I was hopeful,” said Kim, who became sober and got a job as a cleaner at a VA hospital.

When he got the call to meet with an immigration officer in April, he thought he was just switching probation officers. Three months later, his case is still pending.

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Ice declined to comment on the specifics of the case, saying in a statement it was under review and that Kim was arrested “after it was determined he has a prior felony conviction”.

After the inauguration of Trump – whose anti-immigration agenda and xenophobic rhetoric was central to his campaign – Ice arrests increased by 40%. That could be a factor in Ice’s decision to target Kim months after his criminal case was resolved and after he got the rehab he needed through the VA, another branch of the federal government.

The deportation of veterans, however, is not a new problem. Records suggest that more than 230 were deported in 2016 under Barack Obama, and Democrats have recently pushed for legislation to help deported veterans return to the US.

Jordan Meyers, a 29-year-old veteran who met Kim at a veterans’ support group, noted that many vets suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which can lead to drug problems and run-ins with the law. Those vets need programs and services, not deportation, he said.

“Is this how we support our troops?”

Asked about the deportation of veterans, an Ice spokeswoman added: “The Department of Homeland Security will not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”

Kim is also classified as the kind of “violent felon” prioritized for deportation under Obama, and activists said his case demonstrated that when conservatives and progressives alike argue that Ice should focus on “criminals”, there’s little consideration for immigrants’ individual circumstances and whether they actually pose a public safety risk.

“He’s not a danger to anyone,” Warden-Hertz said of Kim. “It’s tragic. Just as things are finally going well, Ice calls him in and detains him.”

Kim, who was living with his father at the time of his recent arrest, said he did not speak much Korean, and had no idea how he would find a job if he were deported.

It’s also been painful, he said, to watch other detainees get shipped away every few weeks, especially those torn apart from their children.

“It’s frightening, because I don’t know what happens to people when they leave here.”