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New Bill Honors Fallen Soldier

Randallstown, MD (WJZ/AP) ― A Baltimore soldier killed in Iraq while pursuing citizenship inspired legislation announced Tuesday by Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Rep. Elijah Cummings.

The Kendell Frederick Citizenship Assistance Act will make it easier for service members to get their citizenship applications processed in a timely manner, said Mikulski, a Democrat, at a news conference at the Union Bethel AME Church in Randallstown.

"Every military death is a tragedy," she said. "But this one didn't need to happen and we aren't going to stand by and let this happen to anyone else."

Army Spc. Kendell Frederick, 21, was killed in Iraq on Oct. 19 by a roadside bomb as he traveled in a convoy to get fingerprinted for his citizenship application.

"Kendell was fighting for America, but yet the America he fought for would not allow him to become an American citizen," Mikulski said. "He was killed by the botched bureaucracy of the immigration service."

Frederick, a citizen of Trinidad, moved to Randallstown at 15, and joined the Army ROTC program while at Randallstown High School. He graduated in 2003, enlisted in the Army and signed up for eight years. He was assigned to the Army Reserve's 983rd Engineer Battalion, based in Monclova, Ohio, where he was a mechanic who worked on power generators.

He tried for more than a year to become an American citizen with his application failing on three attempts, said Mikulski.

The first attempt failed because the Immigration and Naturalization Service did not send the application to the military unit. The application also was sent back because INS said Frederick didn't pay a fee that Mikulski said service personnel don't have to pay. Lastly, INS told him he had to go to Baltimore to be fingerprinted.

The act, if passed, would allow fingerprints taken by the military to count toward the immigration standards to become a citizen.

It will also assign a military citizenship advocate to inform service members about the citizenship process, require the
Department of Homeland Security to set up a hot line dedicated to serving service members and an investigation into failed immigration services for the military will be conducted.

Frederick was granted his citizenship posthumously.

"It's too little, too late, for too many wrongs," said Mikulski, who gave a letter to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff demanding immediate action to improve the immigration process for U.S. soldiers.

There are 3,000 soldiers with green cards in the service waiting for citizenship, Mikulski said.

"It seems as if almost every obstacle that could be placed in one's way of becoming a U.S. citizen was placed in his way," said Cummings, also a Democrat. "You should not have to die to become a citizen when you're fighting for the United States of America. That is not the all-American way."

Frederick's mother, Michelle Murphy, attended the tribute and said she would like to see the legislation enacted quickly.

Murphy tells WJZ's Gigi Barnett "I felt like he was fighting two wars at the same time. He was fighting the American government to get his citizenship, and this was the same government he gave his life for."

He was fighting the American government for his citizenship and the war in Iraq, she said.

"I'm not going to stand by and let it go," said Murphy. "I'm going to fight all the way until my death, if possible, to get this done."

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