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On Thursday morning, a small group of advocates gathered outside the United States federal courthouse in San Diego, California.
One of them pointed to a poster of a young man in a US Navy uniform, three golden medals pinned to his chest.
“This is my brother, Benito Miranda Hernandez, US Navy veteran,” said James Smith, the founder of Black Deported Veterans of America.
Smith and the other advocates had organised the demonstration on behalf of Hernandez, who was miles away at that moment, stuck in an immigration detention facility.
Brought from Mexico to the US as a baby, Hernandez had completed three tours of duty with the US military during the Iraq war. His military service was meant to be his path to citizenship.
But now, Hernandez is among the immigrant veterans fighting deportation under US President Donald Trump.
“These men and women were promised that they were going to get their citizenship if they served,” Smith said. “Help this brother come home.”
Trump has pledged to prioritise immigrants with criminal records in his push for mass deportation.
But advocates for US military members argue that veterans are particularly vulnerable, given their over-representation in prisons and jails. The majority have reported suffering from mental health problems after their service.
Hernandez, for instance, said he struggled to reintegrate into civilian life after leaving the military. But on June ۱۴, he had finally completed his years-long sentence for a drug conviction.
As he waited for his mother, Maria Miranda, to pick him up, agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained him.
Only afterwards did Miranda and her other son arrive. They spent hours that day looking for him, not knowing where he had gone.
“He was doing things right,” Miranda told Al Jazeera in Spanish. “He had so many hopes, so many dreams.”
Hernandez has since been transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. He faces deportation, despite having received his green card for permanent residency earlier this year. He previously spoke to Al Jazeera about his experiences for an article published in April.
Hernandez’s detention is part of a trend under the Trump administration.
While the exact number of deported veterans is impossible to pin down – ICE has long failed to collect the veteran status of the people it detains, as is required – several advocates told Al Jazeera that they have been witnessing a rise in the deportations of US veterans during Trump’s second term.
The New York Times reported in March that at least ۳۴ veterans have been placed in deportation proceedings in the last year.
Some cases have received media attention. But advocates say other immigrant veterans have avoided the spotlight, fearing it may have a negative impact on their immigration cases.
“As the ICE raids continue and revamp across the country, there’s going to be people that are veterans that have not become US citizens that unfortunately will end up falling through the cracks,” said Robert Vivar, cofounder of the Tijuana-based Unified US Deported Veterans Resource Center.
Veterans, like other immigrants across the country, have been detained while pursuing the mandatory steps in their immigration process, according to Danitza James, the president of Repatriate our Patriots, an advocacy group.
They are often flagged for having outstanding warrants or criminal convictions that have not been vacated. James said she is in contact with about six veterans who had been detained by ICE in ۲۰۲۶ alone.
“Our government, they don’t place any value in the service that our immigrants have,” James, who is herself a veteran and naturalised citizen, told Al Jazeera. “They honestly see us as disposable.”
For decades, the US military has recruited immigrants to enlist in its wars abroad to help address staffing shortages.
Recruiters often tell immigrant enlisters that military service offers a shortcut to naturalised citizenship.
In theory, it should. But while deployed, many immigrant soldiers, like Hernandez, have reported delays in the naturalisation process.
By the time Hernandez was called for his citizenship interview in ۲۰۰۶, two years had passed since he finished his last deployment. He had a criminal conviction by that point – and his citizenship case was denied.
The failure to protect immigrant veterans is representative of the government’s larger failures to reckon with its military policies, according to advocates like Smith.
“The United States government is failing to take accountability for what they’ve created,” Smith told Al Jazeera. “You bring us in and strip us of part of our humanity so that we can kill without repercussions.”
“Then, when you get out, there is no process that gets you ready to be in the civilian world.”
Several bills to protect immigrant veterans are currently under consideration in Congress. But recruiters continue to target immigrant communities with the promise of expedited citizenship.
The next steps for Hernandez are not yet clear. At Thursday’s rally, a lawyer with a local immigration nonprofit told Smith and other advocates that the group may be interested in helping with Hernandez’s case.
In the meantime, Hernandez’s mother has been trying to keep his spirits up.
Miranda takes his calls from the ICE detention centre and sees him during the facility’s visiting hours on Saturdays. But the two-hour drive from Anaheim to San Diego is difficult for her health.
“On Saturday, when I saw him, he was very, very depressed,” Miranda told Al Jazeera.
“He said, ‘I don’t want to cause you any more problems. I don’t want to upset you any more, Mom. I’m doing things right. I’m praying for myself,'” Miranda recalled, in tears.
“They clipped the wings of a bird, and all the hopes he had. They threw them in the trash.”
