When Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned six New Yorkers last week, she included Sae Joon Park, a Korean-born U.S. Army veteran with a Purple Heart who had been forced to self-deport last year after nearly a half-century in the United States.
Mr. Park, 57, was just a child when he moved to the United States with his mother. As a young man, he served in Panama, fighting in the U.S. mission to capture Gen. Manuel Noriega. He returned with a serious injury and a post-traumatic stress disorder, his lawyer said, that led to an addiction to crack cocaine.
Mr. Park was a legal permanent resident of the United States, but in 2007, he was convicted of drug possession in Queens. In 2009, he failed to appear at a court hearing and was charged with bail jumping. He later turned himself in and served his time. A deportation order was deferred as long as he remained out of trouble.
He did, and got sober, and for years, Mr. Park’s life seemed to have turned around.
Then came President Trump’s immigration crackdown. In June 2025, the authorities told Mr. Park to leave or be deported. He chose to leave.
It is not clear if Mr. Park’s pardon will allow him to return to the United States. His lawyer, Danicole Ramos, said in a statement that the next steps would be to ask the government to reconsider Mr. Park’s order for removal. The fact that the bail-jumping conviction has been cleared by the pardon might push immigration officials to give Mr. Park’s case another look, Mr. Ramos said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement provided through his lawyer, Mr. Park said that he was “incredibly grateful to Governor Hochul for giving me this chance,” adding, “I hope and pray every day for the opportunity to return home to my family and to the country I served.”
Mr. Park was not the only immigrant pardoned by Ms. Hochul: The governor also granted clemency to Keisy Guerrero Mariano, 38, who served two years in prison after he was convicted of assault in 2015 for attacking someone with a belt two years earlier.
Mr. Guerrero Mariano, who is originally from the Dominican Republic, is facing deportation. It is not clear how his pardon will affect his ability to stay in the United States.
The pardons of Mr. Park and Mr. Guerrero Mariano are the latest in a string of confrontations between New York and the Trump administration on immigration.
Last Tuesday, the state’s Local Cops, Local Crimes Act went into effect, barring the authorities from collaborating with federal deportation efforts.
Days later, President Trump denounced Ms. Hochul on Truth Social, claiming without evidence that she had released “7000 hard core criminals” and urging voters to support her Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive.
Since Mr. Park’s deportation last June, his case has been taken up by Democratic lawmakers concerned about the Trump administration’s crackdown, most notably at a congressional hearing in December.
During the hearing, Representative Seth Magaziner, a Democrat from Rhode Island, asked Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security at the time, whether the administration had deported any U.S. veterans.
When she denied that it had, Mr. Magaziner pulled out an iPad on which Mr. Park could be seen on a Zoom call from South Korea.
“Can you tell Mr. Park why you deported him?” the congressman demanded.
In announcing the six pardons on Friday, Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said that based on the recommendations of the state’s Clemency Advisory Panel, she had chosen people who had “lived crime-free lives for a significant period of time” and “made positive contributions to their communities.” During her five years in office, Ms. Hochul has granted 125 pardons and 20 commutations.
The other four New Yorkers pardoned by Ms. Hochul included Kile Jackson, 54, and Angela Walder-Tuckett, 62, both of whom had been convicted of drug charges; Heriberto Atiles, 61, who had been convicted of carrying a loaded firearm; and Paul Koopman, 62, who had been convicted of driving while intoxicated.
Last year, Ms. Hochul pardoned a Laotian refugee, Somchith Vatthanavong, whose conviction for manslaughter 35 years earlier had placed him at risk for deportation. Mr. Vatthanavong served 14 years in prison before being released and starting a family.
At the time of the pardon, Ms. Hochul said that she had tried to balance the possibility that Mr. Vatthanavong would reoffend with the need to forgive. “I follow what the Bible tells us: ‘Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you,’” Ms. Hochul said.
“They’ve paid their debt,” she said, referring to Mr. Vatthanavong and a number of other immigrants she had pardoned at the time, “and I’ll be damned if I let them be deported to a country where they don’t know a soul.”
That is largely the situation that Mr. Park now confronts. After 49 years in the United States, he is a stranger in his home country, unable to speak or write Korean, while his immediate family remains in America.
“Everything got taken away from me, just like that,” he said.
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