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The U.S. Army has begun discharging some immigrants who enlisted in the military with promises that their service would lead to U.S. citizenship, according to a report Thursday in The Associated Press.

Attorneys representing at least 40 people recruited through a program meant to attract talented enlistees — those with special language or medical skills — say their clients have been discharged or had their military status put into doubt in recent days. Some told the AP that they were given no reason why the discharges took place, while others said personal links to relatives living abroad led them to be labeled as security risks.

The AP could not confirm how many people had been discharged, and both the Pentagon and the Army declined to comment to AP.

The move, if true, is the latest sign of the Trump administration’s effort to rein in access to immigration. The White House has drawn widespread fury over its zero tolerance immigration policy, which has led to thousands of migrant children being separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. And the president recently celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold his travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority nations.

The U.S. had for years allowed skilled immigrants with legal status to enlist under the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest program, or MAVNI, and gain what President George W. Bush called “expedited naturalization” for their service. Many were recruited to fill posts requiring medical expertise, including Army Reserve dentists, or specific language skills, including Russian and Mandarin Chinese, according to The Washington Post.

The AP noted that about 10,000 people are currently serving under the program and that, in order to gain citizenship, enlistees must be honorably discharged. Some lawyers told AP, however, that the recruits removed from the Army were given neither an honorable nor dishonorable designation, but rather an “uncharacterized discharge.”

At least one, Lucas Calixto, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying he served for more than two years before he was unceremoniously kicked out even after recently earning a promotion in rank.

The Pentagon suspended MAVNI last fall and canceled the contracts for hundreds of recruits amid criticism that the program had grown too difficult to navigate due to increasingly detailed background checks, according to the Post.

Thursday’s report has already drawn swift rebuke from those on both sides of the aisle. Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) called the decision “yet another low” by the White House, pointing to generations of immigrants that had served in the Armed Forces who have “boosted our military’s ranks and defended our values.”

“This decision must be reversed now, for the sake of our military, to show that America keeps its word and to uphold the very values we claim to stand for,” Kasich said in a statement on Twitter.

AP’s report that US Army is purging immigrants is wrong

Calling out a misleading report by the Associated Press, a U.S. Defense official said “there is no new policy” for immigrants who wish to join the U.S. military, Fox News reported.

There are still some unanswered questions, but this is what we know:

Immigrants with legal status in the U.S. can earn expedited paths to citizenship by serving in the military, and in 2009 the Obama administration launched a special program for immigrant recruits.

But recently, some immigrant recruits were told that they were a security risk for having relatives out of the country, others were told that the Department of Defense were not able to finish their background checks, and some were given no explanation at all for their discharge, according to the AP.

The big picture: The Trump administration has been using everything within its power to limit both illegal and legal immigration. There has also been an increased denial rate for veterans requesting deportation protections for their spouses and dependents, according to the Military Times.

In 2016, the rejection rate was 10%. It's currently at 20%.
How it works: Only legal immigrants with some form of a legal visa — even a student visa — can serve in the military. They must all go through security screening before being formally admitted into the military.

The U.S. Army sent out a statements saying that any recruit, an immigrant, who receives "an unfavorable security screening is deemed unsuitable for military service and is administratively discharged. Each recruit undergoes an individualized suitability review and the length of time for the review is dependent upon each individual’s unique background.“

The U.S. has been in a period of "hostility" since 9/11, which qualifies any non-U.S. citizen who serves in the military on active-duty or selected reserve for immediate citizenship, according to USCIS.

In times of peace, non-U.S. citizens qualify for citizenship by serving honorably in the military for one year, according to Military.com.

A 2009 recruitment program, called Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, allowed some legal immigrants with specific, in-demand skills to join the Army in exchange for expedited citizenship. The DoD planned to recruit up to 5,200 such immigrants in 2016, according to a DoD fact sheet.

Yes, but: As many of the immigrant recruits and reservists had not yet gone through their basic training, according to the AP, they had not yet earned qualification for citizenship.

By the numbers:

There are around 511,000 foreign-born veterans living in the U.S., according to a 2015 report by the Migration Policy Institute.

Immigrants have fought in every major U.S. military conflict. 20% of the Union army during the Civil War were foreign-born, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In 2016, 8,885 military immigrants were naturalized, according to DHS data.

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Overwhelming majority favor what the Left dreads, America succeeding.

Nonresponse to polls is a big factor affecting the accuracy of poll results. In a probability sample, the respondents can be thought of as “self-selecting” into the sample. To the extent that the respondents and non-respondents differ systematically on the survey variables—for example, which candidate they support in an upcoming election--nonresponse can bias the poll results, and that is true even if the initial sample was a probability sample. In a similar way, the accuracy of non-probability samples, such as opt-in samples, can be affected by self-selection. In both types of sampling, if the people who participate in the poll are different from those who do not, results can be biased because of these differences.

criminals and/or terrorist