Colorado Congressman Ed Perlmutter Helps National Guardsman Deployed To Protect Capitol Become U.S. Citizen

(CBS4)- If anyone is looking for silver linings in all the chaos at our nation's Capitol, Colorado Congressman Ed Perlmutter has a story to share. On Wednesday, Perlmutter was getting coffee near his office in Washington DC and he started talking to the National Guardsmen who were in front of him. They shared how one of their men was missing his citizenship ceremony because he had been deployed to protect the Capitol.

Perlmutter told CBS4 Political Specialist Shaun Boyd he knew he needed to do something. So, he says he made calls to Delaware Gov. John Carney and to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, from California who is the chair of the subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship.

They all worked together so that National Guardsman Specialist Jun Cho could take his Oath of Allegiance near DC and become a citizen of the United States.

Perlmutter said he knew he needed to help because, "They are here serving our nation at a very important time and here is a young man who was going to be citizen that day and had been deployed to protect the nation that he was going to become a citizen of, and that got waylaid, and I figured it was the least I could do to help that young man out, to help his Delaware unit, and to help our county because he wants to be a citizen."

Perlmutter says he watched the ceremony on Facebook Live and it gave him "goose bumps" to see Cho "take the Oath of Allegiance to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic."

Specialist Jun Cho has served the Delaware National Guard 262nd Heavy Equipment Maintenance Company for the past two years.