SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA — Mexican-born U.S. Navy veteran Benito Miranda Hernandez began overseeing the overnight car park at a veterans employment center in San Diego in early 2026 as part of a reentry programme to help former prisoners transition back into society. Hernandez is serving out a prison sentence that concludes in August 2026 and faces possible deportation because he does not hold U.S. citizenship.

Hernandez was brought across the border by his mother as a baby and grew up in California. A recruiter at his high school convinced him to enlist in the U.S. military at age 18 after the September 11, 2001 attacks. He was deployed during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and twice more thereafter, serving three tours of duty aboard the USS Kearsarge LHD-3, an amphibious assault ship.

"I was trying to make a difference, trying to defend the land that was supposed to be my country — that adopted me," Hernandez said. "They said I was going to get to see the world. I didn't. It was nothing but sea."

Hernandez filed his application for U.S. citizenship during his first deployment. The naturalisation process for active-duty service members during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was supposed to take about six months under a pledge by President George W. Bush, but stricter background checks after the September 11 attacks slowed processing across the immigration system. Hernandez was called for his citizenship interview in 2006, two years after returning from his final deployment. By that time he had a criminal conviction for drug possession, and because he was no longer in the military, his expedited naturalisation case was denied.

Shortly after returning from deployment, Hernandez was jailed on illegal gun charges. When he was released a few weeks later, he had been evicted from his apartment and all his possessions, including military memorabilia, had been confiscated. "I came out with nothing," Hernandez said.

Hernandez has three children, all U.S. citizens. "I was willing to die for this f***ing country. I went to war for this f***ing country. And you want to try to deport me?" he said. Since President Trump began his second term in 2025, at least 675,000 people have been forcibly removed as part of a mass deportation campaign as of January 2026. In 2022, nearly 731,000 military veterans in the United States were immigrants, comprising roughly 4.5 percent of the U.S. veteran population, and an estimated 118,000 of them did not hold citizenship.

Of his current work at the veterans employment center, he said: "The satisfaction that I'm helping you makes me feel good. It's like my soul needs something good, you know?"