State declares Navy veteran not a U.S. citizen, revokes his driver's license

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) As we celebrate the nation's birthday and what it means to be an American, a U.S. Navy veteran who has lived in the United States for more than seven decades and considers himself as much of a patriot as anyone has said the state of Tennessee is challenging his citizenship.

The state said he was not a U.S. citizen, but he provided documents proving he was.

David O'Connor served his country and now the state is imposing obstacles on him to prove he is an American. And at the same time, they took away his driver's license.

Watch a preview of my interview with O'Connor in the player above.

After a long career as a commercial truck driver, you might not be surprised to learn that O'Connor drives a big rig. But these days, he's not actually driving it. Legally, he can't.

Bryan Staples / WTVF

“You don’t have a driver’s license?” we asked O’Connor.

“No,” he replied.

“But you had a driver’s license?” we asked.

“I did it,” O'Connor said.

The 77-year-old had been driving for 61 years. He had driver's licenses in New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and, eight years ago, when he moved to Tennessee, he got his license here.

But last month, Tennessee revoked O'Connor's driver's license.

“They told me I shouldn’t have had a license in the first place because I couldn’t prove I was a citizen,” O’Connor said.

“It amazes me,” Jean O’Connor told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.

Jean is David's wife.

“I am shocked. I am outraged that at 77 years old he is now considered a non-citizen by the country he has lived in his entire life,” Jean said.

It all started in early June when O'Connor went to the McMinn County Driver Services Center to not only renew his driver's license, but also to get one of the new enhanced, or Real ID, cards.

O'Connor took with him his birth certificate, a Canadian birth certificate.

But.

“Was your father an American citizen?” we asked O’Connor.

“He was,” he told me.

And I asked, “Was your mother an American citizen?”

“She was,” he replied.

And since both of her parents were U.S. citizens, and you can see that on her birth certificate, the law states that O'Connor is also a U.S. citizen.

Her parents, born in the United States, had temporarily settled in Canada, and shortly after O'Connor's birth the family returned to the United States.

Bryan Staples / WTVF

David O'Connor speaks to me, Jennifer Kraus, at his home in East Tennessee in late June 2024.

“I've been here 77 years,” O'Connor said, adding: “None of this (situation) makes sense to me.”

And no one, he said, has ever questioned whether he is truly American.

Until now.

“Now?!” Jean O’Connor exclaimed. “That’s the problem. Why now? At 77? Are you kidding me? This is unbelievable.”

Jean found this all the more incredible because her husband had been able to join the U.S. Navy. He was only 17 when he enlisted. He served for four years and was a sonar technician.

And if you look closely at his military discharge form, it asks if the person is a U.S. citizen. There's a box for yes and a box for no. On O'Connor's form, the “yes” box is checked.

“It says on my papers that I am an American citizen,” he said.

And that's not all.

I asked O'Connor, “Did you vote?”

“Every year,” he told us.

He also has a social security card and now that he is retired he receives benefits.

And remember, he was a truck driver, so he had a commercial driver's license for many years and was able to get a standard license in four states, including Tennessee. But now he's not.

Jean O'Connor reiterated: “It's not fair. It's not fair at all.”

Photo submitted to WTVF

A photo of David O'Connor in his Navy uniform. He served in the U.S. Army for four years.

To get a U.S. ID card, which is similar to a driver's license, you need more documents than you would for a regular driver's license to prove your identity. There are eight different ways to prove you're a U.S. citizen, but a Canadian birth certificate isn't one of them.

Employees at the Athens, Tennessee, driver service center, where O'Connor lives, refused to provide her with a real ID. And things got worse. They refused to renew her license, questioning her citizenship and birth certificate.

“They said, 'No, that's not good. We shouldn't have given you the permit in the first place,'” O'Connor recalls.

He continued: “And they just revoked my license on the spot.”

Suddenly, the Navy veteran can't drive, can't fly and won't be able to vote in the next election. In the eyes of the state, he's not an American, and O'Connor said it nearly ruined him.

“It's like your country doesn't want you. I've tried to do things right my whole life. And now it's like I'm nothing,” said a dejected O'Connor.

So we forwarded O'Connor's story to Jeff Long, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Homeland Security and Safety.

“He says he feels like it's a slap in the face and that he feels worthless,” the commissioner was told.

Long responded: “I can understand that, but everybody has to understand that after 9/11, real ID is very specific and there is a federal requirement about what you have to have.”

Long was understanding and said he would look into the situation and help in any way he could, which was more than the state driver services center staff, where they told O'Connor he would have to apply for citizenship, in other words, fill out paperwork to become a U.S. citizen, a process, mind you, that takes time.

“I'll probably be dead before that happens,” O'Connor retorted.

So, at least for now, O'Connor can only sit in his truck and think about what it was like to drive it.

“I miss it. I've been driving all my life,” he says wistfully.

It's now been a month since O'Connor lost his license.

The O'Connors were supposed to visit family in Vermont last week, but without a driver's license, he couldn't fly there. So David had to cancel his plane tickets and they had to ask their son to drive them.

To resolve this issue, I first contacted the Department of Homeland Security a week ago. Then, two days ago, I spoke to Commissioner Long. But despite our efforts and Long's promise to get to the bottom of this, neither I nor O'Connor have heard from the commissioner.

As to why the state revoked her license and refused to renew it, the department cites a law that Tennessee lawmakers passed in 2018, after O'Connor obtained her original Tennessee license, which states that people who are not U.S. citizens cannot obtain a license in Tennessee even if they had a license in another state, as O'Connor did.

But as we pointed out to state officials, this law applies to people who are not U.S. citizens, and, again, O'Connor is.

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