{"id":332542,"date":"2026-08-29T06:58:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T06:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/332542\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T06:58:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T06:58:20","slug":"new-york-governor-pardons-hawaii-purple-heart-veteran-forced-to-self-deport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/332542\/","title":{"rendered":"New York governor pardons Hawaii Purple Heart veteran forced to self-deport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) &#8211; New York Governor Kathy Hochul granted a pardon to Sae Joon Park, the Purple Heart veteran and Hawaii resident who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\/2025\/06\/24\/us-army-purple-heart-veteran-forced-self-deport-hawaii\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\/2025\/06\/24\/us-army-purple-heart-veteran-forced-self-deport-hawaii\/\">self deported to Korea last year because of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Army veteran was shot in combat during the 1989 Invasion of Panama and suffered for years from PTSD. He had his green card revoked in 2011 after he was convicted of drug and bail jumping offenses in New York City.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">His Purple Heart status allowed him to stay in the country, but when that protection was ended by the Trump administration, Park was forced to self deport in June 2025 after 50 years in the U.S., leaving behind his partner, children and parents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\/2026\/01\/15\/hawaii-purple-heart-veteran-forced-self-deport-requests-pardon-new-york-governor\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\/2026\/01\/15\/hawaii-purple-heart-veteran-forced-self-deport-requests-pardon-new-york-governor\/\">The pardon opens the door for his attorneys to go to the Board of Immigration Appeals<\/a> and begin the process of having his removal order vacated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThis was the win we needed to at least move his case forward because we didn\u2019t have much options to try to bring him back unless we got that pardon from Governor Hochul. So it\u2019s a huge win. We\u2019re not done yet,\u201d said his attorney Danicole Ramos, associate director of the Refugee &amp; Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Hawaii at Manoa\u2019s William S. Richardson School of Law.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI pray every night, and that\u2019s always in the back of my mind that there\u2019s a good chance that I could never make it home,\u201d Park said. \u201cIt\u2019s still not, it\u2019s still not done, but the fact that like this makes it so much more hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>PREVIOUS COVERAGE<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) &#8211; New York Governor Kathy Hochul granted a pardon to Sae Joon Park, the Purple Heart&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9207,2035,2301,125096,9,24,55,54,56,18832,125095,69754,21145],"class_list":["post-332542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-deportation","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-attorney","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-purple-heart","tag-sae-joon-park","tag-self-deport","tag-veteran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}