Howard Bailey, left, embraces his brother Adrian Bailey at Reagan National Airport in 2021. Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades

RICHMOND, Va. — Pure, unadulterated optimism walked through the halls of federal court in Richmond on Wednesday, 52 years old and in a slim-cut, dove-gray suit, with an irrepressible smile.

“I’m proud to be an American,” sang Howard Bailey, 52, a Navy veteran who was ripped from his family, his home and his business in the early morning darkness 13 years ago by immigration agents following up on a 20-year-old pot conviction.

His deportation — triggered when he tried to apply for U.S. citizenship more than a decade ago — shattered a life in Virginia he had worked hard to earn, sending him into a lonely, 11-year exile in Jamaica, the country he left as a teenager with the rest of his family.

They all became American citizens, woven into the fabric of their Chesapeake, Va., community, thriving. Bailey, meanwhile, lost everything he worked for.

“The injustice he’s faced,” said Nayna Gupta, shaking her head as she recounted Bailey’s case, one of dozens she’s worked on as associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “And still, he still loves this country so much.”

Wednesday was the final step in Bailey’s long and frustrating tangle with the American immigration system when finally — after serving two tours in Operation Desert Storm under the Stars and Stripes, putting two kids into public school, buying a house and building a small trucking business, then losing it all — he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

“Finally, this is the last one,” said Jean Bailey, the matriarch of the family, who put two thumbs in the air as soon as her son finished reciting the Oath of Allegiance in the courthouse here.

He and 66 other new Americans in suits, skirts, a gold-embellished agbada, hijabs, military fatigues and American flag lapel pins renounced “all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty.”

They came here from Serbia, Liberia, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Italy, Ireland, Israel and dozens of other nations.

A man in combat fatigues came from Ghana.

“Someone knew to help him through this process,” Bailey said, after seeing the military man and wishing he had done the same when he wore the Navy’s uniform.

They swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” to “bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law.”

Gupta stage-whispered: “He already did that.”

Bailey fist-pumped in the solemn courtroom air when he finished.

Howard Bailey’s family, friends and lawyers pose for a photo at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., on Aug. 24, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades

He is one of thousands of people who have been living and working in America for years who’ve been deported unjustly or simply unnecessarily.

“When someone is unjustly deported, it doesn’t just impact the individual,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) said on Twitter this week about the thousands of cases like Bailey’s. “As I’ve seen firsthand, it leaves families devastated and communities without a valuable piece of the puzzle.”

Cleaver, along with other congressional Democrats, sent a letter on Monday urging Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to create a centralized office to address cases like Bailey’s. Right now, all they’ve got is sympathetic lawyers or organizations like Gupta’s.

Bailey’s nightmare began when was 40, living in his home near the Indian River that he bought with his Veterans Affairs loan when he was swept up in a wave of deportations ordered by President Barack Obama in 2010.

“I heard a knock on my door around 5:30 in the morning. When I answered I saw all these guys in khaki suits and a state trooper,” Bailey said in testimony he gave to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee in 2021.

“I got so scared. I had no idea what was happening. It was ICE and they told me they were taking me because of the conviction — even though it was so many years before,” he recounted at the time. “ICE grabbed me and didn’t care that my 11-year-old daughter came out screaming and crying. My wife begged them to let her give me pants to wear before they took me away since I was in my pajama shorts.”

The pot case — Bailey’s first arrest ever — happened right after he left the Navy, when he picked up some packages a friend had sent him. The packages were full of marijuana and the cops knew they were coming — they were investigating the friend.

He still insists that he didn’t know what was in those packages.

His lawyer told him it would be a “slap on the wrist” if he pleaded guilty and avoided trial. He did that, served his time and moved on, never in handcuffs until that morning in his living room, when everything changed.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) pardoned Bailey in 2017, but it wasn’t enough to bring him home.

“My body is in Jamaica, but my heart and my soul are in the U.S.A.,” he told me over the phone in 2021, while cooking in his small kitchen, despondent.

During his years in Jamaica, his marriage ended, his company went under, his children graduated from school and became adults, and Virginia became what was then the 18th state in America to legalize recreational marijuana. “Every day I hope I can wake up from this nightmare,” he said then.

A month later, he did, when the federal government allowed him to return.

And this week, 13 years and 11 days after the government yanked him out of his American dream at 5:30 a.m., he became a U.S. citizen.

The time in exile “changed him,” said Bailey’s younger brother, Adrian, 48. “He’s more centered. He slowed down. He’s more thoughtful, doesn’t let the little things bother him anymore.”

Winds from a summer rainstorm flapped the tiny American flag poking out of Howard Bailey’s breast pocket as he left a courtroom, singing.

He’d like to work with Gupta and help others like him through the Chance to Come Home program.

Eventually, he’ll take a vacation to Jamaica with his family.

“When I fly there on my own,” he said. “By choice.”