Raul Rodriguez, a US military veteran, deported thousands of people while working for CBP. Later, he learned he's undocumented.
Raul Rodriguez says he'll never forget the moment he realized his life was built on a lie.
By his estimates, he'd helped deport thousands of people while working for US Customs and Border Protection and before that, for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Suddenly, he found himself on the opposite end of the spectrum, fighting for a chance to stay in the United States. Anyone who's served in the military, Vega says, knows what it's like to have to follow orders and put your personal feelings aside. And to her, Rodriguez's work at CBP was no different.
Since then, she'd seen him dedicate so many years to his job, and earn high accolades, too. In 2006, officials flew him to Washington to receive an integrity award for his work in a smuggling bust."He'd been all over the world for the US," she says, "and yet he couldn't travel outside his own backyard. He couldn't go past a checkpoint."
After placing him on leave during the investigation, Rodriguez says CBP fired him in 2019 because he wasn't a US citizen and therefore no longer met the requirements to work as an officer. He remains proud of the integrity award he won on the job. He still has it on a shelf in his living room. And he keeps a photo of him shaking the CBP commissioner's hand that day on his phone.
Vega estimates there could be thousands of veterans who are still out there and aren't getting enough help, between veterans who've been deported and veterans who are in immigration detention fighting their cases. But Raul and Anita Rodriguez say that in Vega and other advocates for deported veterans they found the sense of community they'd lost.
"We were just really worried and trying to plan ahead for what if he was deported," says Danitza James, Repatriate Our Patriots' executive director. It could be years before he has a document declaring he's in the country legally, and years after that until he's able to become a US citizen. His November hearing brought him a reprieve, but it's hard for Rodriguez to celebrate. His oldest son, who was born in Mexico, also lost his US citizenship when Rodriguez's Mexican birth certificate was discovered. He's received temporary permission to stay in the United States due to his father's military service, but still struggles to find work and fears being separated from his wife and children. Rodriguez says it's been devastating to watch his son suffer.
"I was blind," he says, describing his life before his own immigration ordeal began. "I didn't see what was going on."
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