Jose Gutierrez
Profile
Age: 22
From: Los Angeles
Assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Incident: Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez was killed in action in Southern Iraq.
Died: March 21, 2003
By Martin Kasindorf
USA Today
LOS ANGELES — One of the first U.S. servicemen killed in combat in Iraq was not a citizen of the country for which he sacrificed his life.
Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 22, a rifleman with the Marines, died in a firefight March 21 near Umm Qasr.
Born in Guatemala, Gutierrez held permanent U.S. resident status, which he obtained in 1999.
At 14, with his parents dead, Gutierrez followed the path of 700,000 of his countrymen to California. He made the 2,000-mile journey from his Guatemala City neighborhood without entry papers. He hopped 14 freight trains to get through Mexico. U.S. immigration authorities detained him.
Fernando Castillo, Guatemala’s consul general in Los Angeles, says the United States doesn’t deport Guatemalan minors who arrive without family. Gutierrez was made a ward of Los Angeles Juvenile Court. He was placed in a series of group homes and foster families. He...