Life changed for Raúl Rodríguez in 2018 when federal investigators showed him a Mexican birth certificate bearing his name. It was then that Rodríguez realized the U.S. birth certificate he had used for decades was fraudulent. He was not a U.S. citizen. He was an undocumented immigrant.
According to his estimates, he helped deport thousands of people while working for CBP and, before that, for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Suddenly, he found himself at the opposite end of the spectrum, fighting for the chance to stay in the U.S. * U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
After placing him on leave during the investigation, Rodriguez says CBP fired him in 2019 because he was not a U.S. citizen and therefore no longer met the requirements to work as an agent.
But now, almost five years later, Rodriguez, 54, says he realizes he also gained something amazing after that moment when he learned he was not a U.S. citizen.
Rodríguez states that the day he received that visit, he questioned who he really was and why his father had not told him about the truth of his birth certificate.
Rodriguez is not entirely clear on how, after years of federal background checks, his Mexican birth certificate never turned up. It only came to light when Rodriguez applied for a visa for his brother.
The judge had said she planned to rule in his favor and grant him cancellation of deportation, a key step that would allow Rodríguez to become a legal resident of the United States. But there was still a catch: the law only allows 4,000 such cases to be approved each year, so, once again, Rodríguez would have to wait.
It could be years before he has a document stating that he is legally in the country, and years after that before he can become a U.S. citizen. Every day, Rodríguez checks the immigration court website for more information. And every day he sees the same word that describes his case: “pending.”.
Source: CNN en español, by Catherine E. Shoichet