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A former immigration officer for the US Customs and Border Protection agency who processed deportation cases for nearly 20 years now fears being deported after an ironic twist of fate. It turned out he wasn’t actually a US citizen, Insider reported.

Raul Rodriguez processed several deportation cases in a period of nearly 20 years of working as an immigration officer. But little did he know he would soon fear deportation himself.

According to Insider, trouble started when Rodriguez, who has lived in the United States for almost 50 years and served with the US Navy, started the process of helping his brother who is in Mexico, migrate to the United States. So, he submitted his own citizenship paperwork along with his brother’s paperwork to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Then, he got a call from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), stating that they found a birth certificate for Rodriguez that showed he was actually born in Mexico, not in the US, KRGV News reported.

Rodriguez said he had never seen the birth certificate before, but once the OIG began a criminal investigation into whether his brother’s immigration application had been falsified on Rodriguez’s part, his father admitted that he was actually born in Mexico.

The OIG fired Rodriguez from his job. Thankfully, they cleared him at the end of the investigation, since he didn’t know he was born in Mexico. Rodriguez says he and his family have struggled financially since. His wife also works processing immigration applications, and Rodriguez said he has had to refinance his home.

In addition, he said he looks over his shoulder during his day-to-day life, because his residency application was stalled. Rodriguez’s lawyer says USCIS is holding him to an outdated standard concerning the falsification of information (what Rodriguez believed to be his real US birth certificate) on his brother’s immigration application.

His lawyer believes that his application should not be held back because the USCIS policy states that the application must have been knowingly falsified, but it has been more than a year since Rodriguez filed for residency.

Rodriguez has since filed a motion for reconsideration, according to the report. He plans to challenge the ruling in court if he is not successful. In the meantime, he is on the watch for Border Patrol agents – the same people he used to work with.