American authorities returned a decorated Fort Carson Army veteran and also a convicted felon to Colorado this weekend, the latest stop on the former soldier’s criss-crossed deportation trail.

Jose Barco’s arrival to Aurora’s U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center on Sunday afternoon put yet another question mark on nearly three months of uncertainty for the ex-soldier, during which ICE transferred him eight times across three states.

An immigration attorney working pro bono has filed a motion in U.S. Immigration Court on Friday afternoon to ask that an immigration judge review his case.

Barco was taken into custody in January after being released on parole after 15 years for good behavior from a 40-year prison sentence — he had been convicted for shooting into a crowd and hitting a pregnant woman.

His wife, Tia Barco, who in 12 weeks has become somewhat of an expert in immigration law, was afraid to feel any emotion “after the constant chaos” of the last 80-plus days, she said.

“I’m just numb,” she told The Denver Gazette in a text.

Ironically, it was not politicians or news stories or even his family’s intervention that put the reins on Barco’s deportation. It was the Venezuelan immigration agents — apparently, they didn’t want him in their country.

Thinking he had stood on U.S. soil for the last time, Barco was flown from the Harlingen, Texas airport on April 3 to Honduras with a group of around 30 Venezuelans, he told his wife.

There, a plane stood by to take them to the city of Maiquetia in central Venezuela.

However, Venezuelan officials wanted nothing to do with Barco and turned him away, suspicious of his Cuban dialect, Barco told his wife. They also questioned his birth certificate as possibly fake.

According to his family, Barco — with only the clothes on his back and a few pieces of ICE-issued underwear in a plastic bag — was sent through the line and rejected at least three times. In the end, he was flown back to Harlingen.

It’s unclear what the United States will do next to the man who served time for a violent felony conviction and, thus, subject to deportation but who also earned a Purple Heart while serving his country.

Barco was born in Venezuela to Cuban parents fleeing the Castro regime. When the Barco family was given asylum in Miami, their youngest child, Jose, was four years old.

Tia Barco described it best.

“He is an orphaned man,” she said.

Barco told her that when Venezuelan officials found out that he had no family or friends in Venezuela, “they laughed and said he definitely didn’t want to end up there.”

After the rejection by Venezuela, Barco was sent to the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas. A week later, he spent the night in Alexandria, Louisiana, and on Sunday was flown back to the Aurora ICE detention facility, the same place ICE agents dropped him off nearly three months ago after picking him up from the Colorado Department of Corrections prison.

Barco was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 50-plus years for firing into a crowd and hitting a pregnant woman.

He is not an American citizen, though he applied for citizenship right after Independence Day in 2006, according to recently unearthed information from a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services report.

“On July 6, 2006, Mr. Barco filed an Application for Naturalization, Form N-400, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,” the report said.

It’s unclear if his paperwork was processed or approved, but he was told by the Army while he was in Baghdad where he served during the “surge” that his application was lost. Instead of giving the oath he prepared for, he could only watch as another soldier was sworn in as an American citizen to the applause and back-claps of his comrades.

His family hopes that a motion filed Friday afternoon in U.S. immigration court is the reason he has been returned to Colorado. The motion is a request to reopen an immigration judge’s jurisdiction to make a decision on his removal or release.

Barco decided to waive his appeal on Feb. 12 and a Colorado immigration judge ordered him deported. The former gunner’s family believes that an untreated traumatic brain injury has left him incapable of making important decisions. He still has migraines and sensitivity to light and sound, and he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, which was also never medically treated.

Barco’s is one of several high-profile cases tied to President Donald Trump’s plan to implement mass deportations that have woven through the federal courts.

As of March 13, nearly 33,000 people had been arrested since Trump took office, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s website.

Of those, more than 14,000 were convicted criminals, nearly 1,000 have pending charges, and only two, including Barco, are veterans with criminal backgrounds. Both men have not yet been deported.

Additionally, two veterans currently on humanitarian parole have received notices of parole revocation, according to Danitza James, an Iraq combat veteran who is president of Repatriate Our Patriots and chair of the League of Latin American Citizens Subcommittee on Deported Veterans.

“For José, going from place-to-place without real answers has been not just destabilizing, it’s been heartbreaking,” said James. “He was a man without a country for most of his life until the day he joined the U.S. Army.”

Barco, who signed up for service at the age of 17 at the beginning of the Iraq War, was a private with the Charlie Company of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Division — a group of 500 soldiers who were the subjects of a documentary that detailed the trauma of the war-affected returning soldiers.

The battalion accounted for half of Fort Carson’s combat losses.

Barco earned a Purple Heart for lifting a suicide vehicle, which exploded off of two men before he realized he was on fire himself. He eventually earned the rank of sergeant. Barco was honorably discharged in 2008 and was diagnosed with PTSD and a Traumatic Brain Injury after two tours during some of the most violent battles of the Iraq War.

After he returned to Fort Carson, he was on half-a-dozen medications plus alcohol. He shot into a crowd hitting a pregnant woman in the leg during a party in Colorado Springs and was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to more than 50 years. The sentence was later amended to 40 years.

Barco spent 15 years in prison, where he taught Math and English to other inmates and was paroled early for good behavior. The parol board noted that his crime was tied to his war experience.

He served his country and he served his time, but for James and a group of family and friends, this latest U-turn to Colorado could mean weeks more of waiting for inevitable deportation or freedom.

“It’s like a form of double jeopardy,” James said. “He wore our uniform, fought our wars and yet when he stumbled, like many do, he was cast out instead of helped up.”