I was an immigration inspector for 18 years and 10 months.
How many people I deported?
You can say in the thousands.
I just knew I was going to deport them, and that’s it.
I didn’t see what the consequences were.
Now I’m an illegal alien.
They call it karma
that now I have to feel what they feel.
Border patrol can stop you anywhere.
I have to be cautious.
I run the risk of getting arrested and deported,
because I don’t have any legal status in the US.
It does hurt and it does make me feel betrayed.
All my life I thought I was in this path,
and then it gets taken away from you.
What do I do now?
I always knew I was born in January 14, 1969, in Brownsville, Texas.
I lived for my first five years of life in Mexico.
My parents lived over there.
When I was five years old, my parents sent me
to live with my aunt and uncle in the United States.
The reason that my parents gave me was that
I was actually a U.S. citizen born in Brownsville,
so I couldn't attend school in Mexico.
So, that's why they sent me with my aunt and uncle
because I had to go to school.
The anglo kids used to piss me off, they’d call me a wetback.
“You’re a wetback, you’re an illegal.”
But I used to tell them, "I'm an American citizen.
It don't matter what I look like."
I wanted to show that people like me can do something, can serve.
I was excited to go to the armed forces.
It made me more American, I think.
I don't know what an American is if it's not
somebody that's serving their country.
I met Raul at immigration inspector school.
I remember when the first time I met him and
I asked him, “Why did you want to do this?
Why do you want to be immigration?”
He says, “Every day that I crossed the port
of entry when I was a kid, that's what I always wanted.
I always said, ‘I'm going to be like them.’”
I got to immigration because I thought the same thing.
Right out of high school, I was homeless with my sister and her five kids
and we lived on the river outside of Algodones, Mexico,
on the U.S. side.
And my first interaction with immigration
was the border patrol agents that when they
would catch people and they had fresh food or water,
they would bring it to me and my sister and her kids.
Immigration was... look what these guys have done for us.
I wanted to be like them.
As an inspector, there’s a lot of stuff
that we have to do that we don’t agree with.
Why can’t we let this through?
You always have that in the back of your mind.
There was this young little boy being smuggled.
The thing that sticks to me is that…
he was coming to donate an organ to his sister
who was dying in Houston
and we couldn't even let him through
to save this little girl's life.
We had to turn him back.
He starts crying and crying and crying and
I go, “What’s wrong?
Hey, what’s going on? Why are you crying?”
He says, "I left my Bible over there."
“We'll just give you another one."
He said, "No, no, that's my Bible."
This job is not for everybody.
If you feel that you can't do what your duties are,
this is not for you.
There's a stigma that comes with it, yes.
From our families.
On one hand they're very proud of us, because to work
for the government, I mean that's a lofty thing in Mexico.
And if you work for the U.S. government, I mean
you're, you know, to put it in a Texan phrase,
you're the shit.
You know, you're somebody, you work for the
federal government, but then on the other hand…
traicionero.
You're a traitor, cause you're deporting your own people.
Thank you for attending the commissioner’s
2006 annual awards ceremony.
Officer Rodriguez participated in an undercover sting operation…
I went for the national integrity award
in Washington, D.C., from the commissioner
and for me it was the greatest feeling ever.
Now you’re somebody.
But I lost everything.
April of 2018. It was a normal day.
I see the two managers come in.
One of them says, "Hey, Raulito, come to the office."
They open up an envelope and he says,
"Can you read that?"
The paper says, "You’re no longer
as of this date a law enforcement officer.
We're going to have to pick up your gun."
About a week later, they take us into a room,
and they said, “Do you recognize this?”
So they give me the birth certificate,
the Mexican birth certificate.
So I start reading, I see my name, Raul Rodriguez,
and I see my parents names, Francisca, Margarito.
"Do you recognize it?"
I go, "I've never seen it.”
They go, "Well, that's your birth certificate there."
For 50 years, I thought I was born here.
I had a Brownsville birth certificate,
a Texas birth certificate.
I wanted to know, what's the truth?
My dad, he always taught us that honesty is
the best thing, no matter what.
And that’s what I lived by.
So I called my nephew to go get my dad in Mexico.
Bring my dad now.
Bring him here if you even have to drag him.
Why did you do it?
Why did you do this to me?
Tell me the truth.
I always wanted to be like my dad.
The day they told me that I wasn’t a citizen,
that next week I was actually supposed to
go for my interview for a customs agent job.
I always knew that I was born in Mexico.
My mom had me over there
and then I got my papers because of my dad,
cause he was a U.S. citizen.
So I mean it wasn’t very complicated.
First couple of minutes, I didn't think it affected me.
And then they were like: well, if his citizenship's
pulled into question, you got your citizenship
through your dad, which is invalid.
And we’re like, what do you mean,
like I’m not a citizen?
And then that's when it sunk in,
they can really deport me.
My grandpa…
I try not to blame.
I think he just wanted a better life for his kid.
I'm trying to immigrate him now.
We submitted his paperwork since May of last year,
of 2018, as soon as we found out.
You would think that they would go out of their way
to help him, get him his residency,
get him his citizenship that he's due,
but that's not happening.
A year and a half later we’re still waiting for a response.
What we’re feeling now, the betrayal that
we're feeling now, it's not the agents...
It's the system itself.
Immigration is my passion and I’m not going
to let anybody taint the idea of what we’ve done.
But I certainly don’t want my kids doing the same job.
It’s a badge broken in half
with the Mexican flag in the middle.
I got it in July, right after I got notified
that I had been terminated from CBP.
They’re delaying everything right now
to where they don’t want to give me anything at all.
Unfortunately, they have to show if it ever
comes out, they're probably going to have to show that,
hey well, you know, we gave him
what he deserved like everybody else.
Everybody’s going to say, "Wait a minute,
you can't do that.
Why, if he breaks the law or why if because this happened to him,
that we're going to give him an exception?”
I had a lot of cases of the same situation and
everything, that these guys were not U.S. citizens.
Our parents do things that we will regret later on.
But your dad knew about it.
You already talking to your dad?
No?
He’s probably felt that he did wrong, but...
he should’ve already told you
when you became part of us and everything, but…
Raul’s entire life, his family told him that
he had to be in the United States because
he was a U.S. citizen.
If it wasn’t for what they did,
I wouldn’t have him and I wouldn't have my kids.
I’m thankful for that.
But, there’s so much hurt and so much abandonment.
He’d always tell me, “I wish I had been
born in Mexico because then I could have stayed
with my mom and dad.”
For the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
According to my dad, he did it because
he wanted a better life for me.
But at what cost was the opportunity?
He always told me to do the right thing.
I always had him up here, he was my hero.
He was... my dad and my dad is the
most honest man that you can think of.
He didn’t follow his own advice.
Now I’m suffering.
I hate to say it,
but my dad’s a piece of shit.
I’m stuck. I’m stuck in my house.
I lost my job.
My retirement.
I sleep in increments of maybe 2, 3 hours.
That stress, it creates problems within the family.
It’s gonna be a miracle if we don’t end up divorcing.
When I was out there doing the job,
I couldn’t see what people go through.
I’m not the same person from when I was there.
I can relate to people who I turned back,
people that I deported, people that I incarcerated
and it’s not a good feeling to be on the other side.