US veteran seeks asylum for Iraqi man who saved his life
LOS ANGELES (AP) — After three military combat tours in war-torn Iraq, Chase Millsap returned home to get on with a civilian life.
Especially not the former Iraqi military officer who had worked with the Americans and was now living a precarious existence as a refugee dodging Islamic State militants seeking to kill him.
For the past two years, Millsap has been fighting a different kind of battle, one to gain asylum for the brother in arms he simply calls The Captain.
"The Captain is the epitome of my personal commitment to take care of people," said Millsap, 33, who served in the Marine Corps and later joined the Army and became a Green Beret.
For the time being, The Captain lives in southern Turkey, struggling to obtain refugee status in what he hopes will be the first step toward seeking permanent asylum in the United States.
After running into one obstacle after another — The Captain couldn't get an interview at one government office because his papers were in English, not Turkish — Millsap returned to the United States and formed the nonprofit Ronin Refugee Project with a handful of other military veterans.
Friendly and outgoing, Mills was a fresh-faced second lieutenant when he arrived in Iraq in 2006 to lead a contingent of U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers.
[...] a typical day begins with physical therapy on his right arm, still damaged by the IED.