ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — A man who once defended America now waits in a foreign country, seeking justice from the same system he fought to protect.

On Monday, Army veteran Godfrey Wade said he’s still getting used to his new life after being deported to Jamaica.

On Feb. 5, Wade, 66, was deported to Jamaica after serving roughly six months in ICE detention.

“They just dump you in a country you haven’t been. I haven’t been to this country in 30 years,” said Wade in an interview with Atlanta News First.

Wade’s attorney, Tony Kozycki, said Wade legally immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager. He served in the U.S. Army for four years in the 1980s before starting a family in Georgia.

“I, for one, loved the uniform,” he recalled about his time in the 7^th Infantry Division, serving in Germany during the Cold War. “The discipline and the consistency of what that institution represents — be all you can be.”

After his military service, Wade, a green card holder, started a life in Georgia and worked in food services, including at H&F Burgers at The Battery in Atlanta, and most recently at the Georgia State Capitol.

In September 2025, Kozycki said Wade was pulled over for failing to use a turn signal. He also did not have a valid license.

During a traffic stop by the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office, Wade was taken into ICE custody due an immigration hold.

Kozycki said that immigration hold was tied to a missed court hearing from 2014 and convictions from nearly 20 years ago.

Kozycki said Wade did not know about that 2014 hearing because he never received a Notice to Appear in 2012.

In documents provided to Atlanta Never First, on Feb. 7, 2012, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a Notice to Appear, ordering Wade to show cause for why he should not be removed from the United States.

The document indicated Wade was served in person. However, that box appears to be scratched out, and instead a box “by regular mail” was marked.

The letter was addressed not to a residence but to the immigration court at “US ICE 180 Spring Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303.”

“You’re supposed to have notice that you have to be there,” Kozycki explained. “That never happened. They then start sending letters to an address that was not associated with him.”

The hearing proceeded without him in 2014. Wade didn’t learn about the missed court date until 2019, when he attempted to renew his green card.

The underlying issues triggering the deportation proceeding dated back even further. According to the Notice to Appear, Wade was convicted on Jan. 31, 2008, of simple assault in violation of Georgia law, and on Jan. 28, 2008, of deposit account fraud, from a bounced check, both from Douglas County Superior Court.

Wade had since repaid the fraudulent check and resolved the assault charge through a plea deal, according to Kozycki.

Kozycki argued these old cases should not have resulted in a deportation, especially given Wade’s decades of lawful residency, military service and community contributions.

After his September 2025 traffic stop, Wade was transported to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.

Wade says he never received a chance to go before a judge and argue his case to stay in the United States.

“I’m not asking for more for myself. I want what I just deserve, no more, no less,” Wade said. “And if so be the case, I put my trust in the justice system of this great country of America.”

Congressman David Scott, who represents Rockdale County, where Wade is from, wrote directly to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, pleading for Wade to have his case heard before a judge. The letter went unanswered.

From Jamaica, Wade faces an uphill battle to reclaim his life. His family — including six children and grandchildren — are devastated by the separation.

“It weighs very heavily on our family,” said his fiancée, April Watkins.

Financial burdens compound the emotional toll, with Wade now starting over with nothing but “the clothes on my back.”

His family started a community fundraiser to help offset the legal fees and the financial burden to live away from Georgia.

“When people fall in love with this country, we really love this country, and we want this country to love us back,” he said.

Requests to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for comment on why Wade was not afforded a hearing before deportation went unanswered.

Wade’s case highlights a broader truth, according to his attorney.

“Godfrey Wade’s case is really a highlight that if we are going to do this, we need to do it the right way,” Kozycki said. “If we need to fix our immigration system, we need to take great care in doing it.”

Kozycki is urging members of the public to contact lawmakers, state and federal, about Wade’s case.

The family launched an online petition to try to stop Wade’s deportation.

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A man whose teenage son is accused of killing two students and two teachers at a Georgia high school should be held responsible for providing the weapon despite warnings about alleged threats his son made, a prosecutor said Monday.

The trial of Colin Gray began Monday in one of several cases around the country where prosecutors are trying to hold parents responsible after their children are accused in fatal shootings.

Gray faces 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter and numerous counts of second-degree cruelty to children related to the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder.

“This is not a case about holding parents accountable for what their children do,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said in his opening statement. “This case is about this defendant and his actions in allowing a child that he has custody over access to a firearm and ammunition after being warned that that child was going to harm others.”

Prosecutors argue that amounts to cruelty to children, and second-degree murder is defined in Georgia law as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children.

Investigators have said Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time, carefully planned the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school northeast of Atlanta that is attended by 1,900 students.

But Brian Hobbs, an attorney for Colin Gray, said the shooting’s planning and timing “were hidden by Colt Gray from his father. That’s the difference between tragedy and criminal liability. You cannot hold someone criminally responsible for failing to predict what was intentionally hidden from them.”

With a semiautomatic rifle in his book bag, the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster board, Colt Gray boarded the school bus, investigators said. He left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the gun and then shot people in a classroom and hallways, they said.

Smith told the jury that Colin Gray’s daughter was in lockdown at her middle school and texted her father that there had been a shooting at the high school. When law enforcement arrived at Gray’s home, he met them in the garage and “without any prompting, he blurts out, ‘I knew it,’” Smith said.

Smith said that in September 2021, Colt Gray used a school computer to search the phrase, “how to kill your dad.” School resource officers were then sent to the home, but it was determined to be a “misunderstanding,” Smith said.

Sixteen months before the shooting, in May 2023, law enforcement acted on a tip from the FBI after a shooting threat was made online concerning an elementary school. The threat was traced to a computer at Gray’s home, Smith said.

Colin Gray was told about the threat and was asked whether his son had access to guns. Gray replied that he and his son “take this school shooting stuff very seriously,” according to Smith. Colt Gray denied that he made the threat and said that his online account had been hacked, Smith said.

That Christmas, Colin Gray gave his son the gun as a gift and continued to buy accessories after that, including “a lot of ammunition,” Smith said.

Colin Gray knew his son was obsessed with school shooters, even having a shrine in his bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, prosecutors have said. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent had testified that the teen’s parents had discussed their son’s fascination with school shooters but decided that it was in a joking context and not a serious issue.

Three weeks before the shooting, Gray received a chilling text from his son: “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands,” according to Smith.

Colin Gray was also aware his son’s mental health had deteriorated and had sought help from a counseling service weeks before the shooting, an investigator testified.

“We have had a very difficult past couple of years and he needs help. Anger, anxiety, quick to be volatile. I don’t know what to do,” Colin Gray wrote about his son.

But Smith said Colin Gray never followed through on concerns about getting his son admitted to an in-patient facility.

The trial is being held in Winder, in Barrow County, where the shooting happened. The defense asked for a change of venue because of pretrial publicity, and prosecutors agreed. The judge kept the trial in Winder but decided to bring in jurors from nearby Hall County to hear the case. Jurors were selected last week.

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Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.