An immigration judge ordered Joel Diaz Rincon deported in 2001 after he was convicted of a nonviolent theft charge, even though the legal permanent resident had served three years in the U.S. Marines and had been shot in the leg by a fellow soldier during training exercises while stationed in Japan.

But it turns out the immigration judge made an erroneous immigration court decision.

On Wednesday, the 51-year-old veteran, who had been living in Arizona at the time he was deported, was allowed to return to the country he served.

Diaz Rincon crossed through the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego just before 10 a.m., setting foot on U.S. soil for the first time as a free man in nearly 20 years.

"Shocking. I never thought I would make it back. I was in shock. I didn’t know what to say," an emotional Diaz Rincon said in a telephone interview as his brother, Jose Santana, drove him from California to east Mesa, where Diaz Rincon will live with his brother for now.

After his deportation, Diaz Rincon lived in Nogales, Sonora, where he worked at a bilingual call center, as a cook at a casino, as the part owner of a Tecate beer store and at a gas station pumping gas earning less than $100 a week.

The hardest part, however, was being separated from his family, he said. His daughter, Alexis, was 6 when he was deported, and then his wife left him.

The separation "was really hard and she didn’t want to continue the relationship. She actually thought I was never going to come back, to tell you the truth," Diaz Rincon said.

Months after he was deported, Diaz Rincon snuck back into the U.S. But in 2008, he was pulled over for a traffic violation by a Phoenix police officer, who turned him over to federal immigration authorities, who deported him back to Mexico. Diaz Rincon said he tried coming back to the U.S. two more times after that but never made it.

His wife later moved to Arkansas with their daughter, who is now 25. She has three children. Diaz Rincon said he last saw his daughter in 2017 when she came to visit him from Arkansas for Father's Day in Nogales with his first grandchild. But he never has met his two other grandchildren, only seeing them on video calls.

His brother and four sisters live in Phoenix, and they took turns making the 3½-hour drive to visit him in Nogales every two or three months, giving him $20 or $30 each time to help out.

At first, Diaz Rincon said he was angry the United States had deported him.

"I felt betrayed. Like I wasn’t good enough to live in the country that I thought of as my own and I was wiling to die for," he said. "But not no more. I learned to get over it. I used to be a little bit bitter and angry, but that wasn’t going to help me to move forward."

Diaz Rincon was born in Nayarit, Mexico, and came to the U.S. when he was 12. He grew up in Covina, a suburb of Los Angeles, where he graduated from high school.

In 1991, he joined the U.S. Marines, shortly after gaining lawful permanent residency through the 1986 "amnesty" bill signed by President Ronald Reagan. He planned to become a police officer after he got out.

"I was going to use it as a stepladder for something better and also as a 'thank-you' to this country for welcoming us and allowing us to live a better life," Diaz Rincon said.

Three years later, he was honorably discharged for medical conditions after a bullet fired by a fellow soldier ricocheted off a target during training exercises and hit him in his left calf.

After his discharge, Diaz Rincon said he was devastated.

He was convicted of a felony theft charge in Arizona. The theft charge stemmed from an incident at a rental car company where Diaz Rincon worked and had rented cars to acquaintances off the books to earn cash to make ends meet, according to Talia Inlender, supervising senior staff attorney at Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm in Los Angeles that represented Diaz Rincon's case.

After his conviction, an immigration judge in Eloy, Sean Keenan, ruled that the theft charge amounted to an aggravated felony under immigration law, stripped Diaz Rincon of his legal status and ordered him deported, Inlender said.

Diaz Rincon was "summarily" removed from the country in a matter of days, she said, despite his military service to the U.S.

Years after Diaz Rincon was deported, new case law clarified that theft offenses such as his could not provide a basis for permanently deporting a lawful permanent resident, Inlender said.

On Jan. 27, a different immigration judge in Eloy, Jennifer Gaz, vacated the original removal order and terminated proceedings. Diaz Rincon has now been restored to lawful permanent resident status, she said.

Diaz Rincon is the second deported veteran to return to the U.S. as part of the Public Counsel's deported veteran program.

Joaquin Avilas, a Marine Corps veteran, whose removal order was overturned, was allowed to return in August, 19 years after he was deported.

"It really raises the question how many others have been deported for erroneous reasons," Inlender said.

The program was created in 2018 with state funding from California to provide legal assistance to deported veterans, she said.

Inlender said the exact number of veterans who have been deported by the U.S. is unknown because immigration authorities do not keep records. But the number is "at least over 300," she said.

A government watchdog report released in June found that federal immigration authorities had deported veterans without first considering their military service as required and therefore may have deported veterans who may have been allowed to remain in the U.S.

Diaz Rincon said he will now have to rebuild his life in the U.S. The owner of a chain of Denny's restaurants has offered him his old job back, he said. His daughter also has offered to buy him a plane ticket to visit her and his grandchildren in Arkansas, but is waiting for her tax refund, he said.

In the meantime, Diaz Rincon said he planned to celebrate with a carne asada dinner Wednesday night at his brother's family's house in Mesa.

Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.

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