demanding citizenship from the battlefield
Hernandez has lived most of his life in the United States. He was brought across the border by his mother as a child. They now have three children, all of whom are US citizens.
By 2022, approximately 731,000 military veterans like Hernandez were immigrants. They make up about 4.5 percent of America’s veteran population.
For decades, facing declining recruitment numbers, the US military has relied on immigrants to serve alongside its US-born citizens. Most also have citizenship – but an estimated 118,000 immigrant veterans do not. Hernandez is one of them.
Like many other veterans struggling to reintegrate into society after their military service, Hernandez struggled to find his place in the civilian world.
Soon after returning from his deployment he was sent to jail on illegal gun charges. When he was released a few weeks later, he found that he had been evicted from his apartment, and all his property, including military memorabilia, had been confiscated.
“I came out with nothing,” he told Al Jazeera. Left with few options, he became involved in selling drugs, which led to him being in and out of jail after being convicted several times.
Without U.S. citizenship – and especially with a conviction on their record – the threat of deportation now looms over them.
His experience is not an outsider thing. Nearly one-third of veterans are arrested at least once in their lifetime, and surveys estimate that more than 181,500 are incarcerated each year.
Many veterans struggle with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorders, and substance abuse issues, which can lead them to commit criminal offenses.
Hernandez was among those admitted after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Later in the military frenzy, a recruiter at his California high school convinced him to sign up.
Hernandez was only 18 years old, and the structure, ambition, and steady income of military service appealed to him.
He said, “I was trying to make a change, trying to protect the land that was supposed to be my country – that adopted me.”
Hernandez was deployed when the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and deployed twice more after that. He served aboard the USS Kearsarge LHD-3, an amphibious assault group in the US Navy.
“He said I was going to see the world,” he said. “I didn’t. It was nothing but the sea.”
During his first deployment aboard the ship, he filed his application for citizenship.
The process was supposed to take only six months. Then President George W. Bush did Mortgage Expediting naturalization applications for active-duty service members who served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an effort to boost recruitment.
But like other immigrant soldiers at the time, Hernandez’s naturalization was delayed. The US immigration system has long been broken, and after the September 11 attacks, service has become even slower due to stricter background checks.
By the time Hernandez was finally called for his citizenship interview in 2006, two years had passed since returning from his last deployment.
He had a prior felony conviction for drug possession. Since he was no longer in the military, Hernandez’s expedited naturalization case was rejected.
