The United States military is considering backing out of a deal it made with non-citizen recruits that would have allowed them to join the armed forces in exchange for helping them through the citizenship process, according to NPR.
By reneging on the deal, it would leave around 1,000 people without legal protection from deportation, according to the news source. The proposal to dismantle the program was laid out in a memo to Defense Secretary James Mattis obtained by NPR.
In the memo, Pentagon officials cite “security concerns and inadequate vetting of recruits under a program called Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest,” NPR reports.
The recruitment program began in 2009 as a way to attract immigrants with medical and language skills to join the military in exchange for being able to bypass the green card process in their path to becoming United States citizens, the news organization reported.
Nearly 10,000 immigrants are in the program, according to NPR, primarily in the Army.
Last year, some Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest recruits were discovered to have offered fake credentials in order to join the program.
You can read the rest of NPR’s report here.
