SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – A United States marine who went to battle in Iraq after he served a sentence for adultery and sodomy is fighting a deportation order to his native Haiti.

Corporal Philippe Louis-Jean, 25, was court-martialed in 2002 for having oral sex with a Marine sergeant’s stepdaughter, who was a minor.

He was demoted and sentenced to 45 days, but released early for good behavior, then sent to Iraq where his weapons company fought from Kuwait to Baghdad, where it secured Saddham Hussein’s palace on April 10, 2003.

The night before, his armoured personnel carrier was hit by three rocket-propelled grenades. Louis-Jean was not wounded but four Marines with him were.

He returned to his home base in Camp Pendleton, California, a month later, and was promoted to corporal.

But in March 2004, Homeland Security officers arrested Louis-Jean under a 1996 anti-terrorist law designed to protect America from its enemies. Louis-Jean was not accused of terrorism. But the tough law transformed his military offense of adultery to a deportable immigration crime of sexual abuse of a minor.

The 1996 law redefined many minor offenses into “aggravated felonies,” and allowed conviction for a misdemeanor like shoplifting to become a basis for deportation, immigration lawyers say.

“People have been deported or detained based on very minor criminal histories,” said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. It released a report last month accusing US Immigration officials of harassing immigrants since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, and targeting Haitian migrants.

Immigration officials say they are just enforcing the law.

Louis-Jean left Haiti when he was 5 and barely remembers his country of birth. He obtained his US resident status, but his 2002 arrest prevented him from applying for citizenship. Both his parents are naturalized citizens.

Louis-Jean was married when he joined the Marines in 1999 and is a certified non-commissioned officer for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare monitoring.

In the military charge against him, no mention was made of the fact that he had committed adultery with a minor because he says the court accepted his and the girl’s statements that she had lied about her age and that she routinely called various Marines at the base at random to invite them to have sex.

“The military considered it to be a minor violation, and he was given a slap on the wrist,” said University of California law professor Neil Frenzen, who has been reviewing Louis-Jean’s case.