SAN IGNACIO, Belize: Michael Enright is finding this sleepy town south of the border to be a long way from Hollywood. A very long way.
If the name – and the face – seem familiar, it’s because for more than two decades Michael Enright was a colorful local figure among the British expat community in Los Angeles. But through a series of events that seem more Hollywood than real life, Michael left his comfortable life on these shores to fight alongside Kurdish forces against Isis in Syria, risking his life on countless occasions, only later to find himself unable to get back to America, the country he loves, and the country for which he says he would gladly have died to fight Islamic terrorism.
I first met Michael on the set of The Brit Pack – a best-forgotten, low-budget British hooligan exploitation movie made in 1993, which featured a cast of mostly local British expats. Michael was running a hostel in Venice at the time, and although he projected the image of a spiky, outspoken Mancunian jack-the-lad, he had a thoughtfulness about him that set him apart from his mostly non-actor castmates.
Over the next two decades Michael found regular work as an actor, appearing in movies including the Tom Cruise vehicle Knight and Day and snagging a guest starring role on the television series “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” As the product of a tough working class background he considered himself to be living the dream, he was then, as he remains, very patriotic and very pro-American.
So the events of September, 11, 2001 affected him deeply. He became fascinated with the battle against Islamic terrorism, frequently considering taking up arms in order to, in his words, ‘give something back to the country that gave me so much.’
The tipping point was the 2014 beheading of journalist James Foley by Mohammed Emwazi – the Kuwait-born but British raised terrorist better known as Jihadi John.
“That video filled me with so much horror, so much fury,” Enright told the BW this week. “The fact that a British person could do so such a thing was unbelievable. It made me, also a British man, determined to do what I could do to fight back against that kind of mindless evil.”
A few months later Enright flew to Heathrow and from there to Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. Arriving at 3am with no friends and no idea what lay in store, he checked into a low-budget hotel and tried to reach the one contact he had made before departure, a shadowy Facebook figure who claimed to be part of the YPG – the Kurdish militia at the forefront of the battle against Isis in neighboring Syria.
“When do you arrive?” came the response.
“I’m already here!” Enright wrote back.
That afternoon, a man called the hotel asking for him.
“You want to join the YPG?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.
“Yes.”
Then, a familiar query: “Are you willing to die?”
“Yes.”
From the hotel Enright was whisked across the Syrian border to a training camp where he spent six weeks learning how to fire an AK-47 and many other arts of war. With his Hollywood background he was soon appointed his unit’s cameraman, having a Go-Pro fixed to his helmet to capture his two harrowing tours of duty in the war-torn region. His days alternated between firefights with local Isis units to humanitarian work and intelligence gathering. In the course of his time there Michael gained a good working knowledge of Arabic and abiding affection for the people of the region.
Yet when it was time for him to go home, Michael found he could not. His visa overstay three decades ago led to him being flagged by US immigration on the Southern border, and despite his demonstrated services to his country and what he claims is a treasure trove of intelligence gathered on the front lines, so far his attempts to navigate the byzantine pathways of the U.S. immigration system has met with failure.
Because he fears returning to the United Kingdom, where some British volunteers with the Kurdish militia have been arrested and accused of consorting with terrorists, Michael finds himself, essentially, a man without a country. As the Washington Post put it in a recent, extensively fact-checked profile, ‘now he wanders, flopping …in slum apartments or couch-surfing in Belize and elsewhere in Latin America in the homes of people he meets in the streets or online. He hauls a thin pad to sleep on, a backpack, a handful of tank tops and shorts, and a clunky, old laptop, hoping against hope that someone, anyone, will help him get back to Los Angeles.”
Despite his frustration, Enright, now 56, his hair cropped short and graying, has repeated the same phrase over and over in hours of interviews with The Post: “I don’t regret a thing, mate. I’d do it all over again.”
For more on Michael’s amazing story, and to contribute to the fund to bring him back to the United States, visit bringmichaelhome.com. You can also find Michael on Facebook.
