Manuel Valenzuela was born in Mexico and raised in the U.S., by a mother who made sure her children knew that because she was an American citizen they were, too.

When Valenzuela enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1969, following his older brother, Valente, into combat overseas, his citizenship wasn’t an issue. The Vietnam War was at its peak. He was a teenaged patriot willing to lay his life on the line for his country. That was enough.

In Vietnam from 1971 to 1972, Valenzuela was part of a special extraction team tasked with providing the literal last line of defense, and hope for survival, for soldiers who were pinned down and fighting for their lives.

“Being in the jungle, you don’t think about anything else but each other, to protect each other and bring each other home,” Valenzuela said. “We don’t leave any man behind.”

More than 30 years after he was honorably discharged from the Marines, and more than a decade after he’d settled in Colorado Springs to raise a family, Valenzuela learned the “band of brothers” truth that had shaped his understanding of service, character and nation no longer applied to him.

Several months after he registered to receive benefits from the VA in 2008, Valenzuela received a letter demanding he appear in immigration court in Denver. Because of misdemeanor convictions in the years after he returned from war, his record had been flagged. The U.S. government questioned his claim of citizenship, and therefore those minor infractions overshadowed — and effectively canceled out — his wartime record of service.

The nation for which he’d risked his life wanted to deport him to Mexico, a country where he hadn’t lived since he was a boy.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I kept it to myself,” said Valenzuela, 69. “To tell anybody about getting a removal notice … ? There’s no words to explain. You feel shame.”

He eventually shared the news with his brother Valente, an Army veteran who received the Bronze Star Medal for his service in Vietnam.

“My brother came to visit … and the way I felt on the inside is how he looked in his face,” Valenzuela said. “I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And my brother reached in his pocket and showed me the removal notice he got to be deported.”

The brothers soon learned that what they’d figured must have been a paperwork glitch was actually policy.

“For this country to do this to my brother and other families … to me, that is a disgrace and dishonor to our oath,” Valenzuela said.

He and Valente donned the uniforms they hadn’t worn since they were young men, and returned to battle. First stop: the courts, to pause the clock on their own deportations.

What began as a personal mission turned into an epic, years-long campaign that would take them from coast to coast, and eventually to the White House, in a banner-wrapped RV, with a documentary film crew along to record the historic events.

No one knows for sure how many American veterans have been deported since a 1996 change in federal legislation made such a thing far easier to do, but documentary filmmaker John J. Valadez said estimates range from thousands into tens-of-thousands.

“We have no idea. According to the U.S. Government, they don’t track veteran deportations,” Valadez said. “Nobody tracks the data. It probably exists, but where … and who has it? Literally, we’re told that these people don’t count, because they’re not counted.”

Valadez had previously produced a film about the birth of the Mexican-American civil rights movement, started by GIs returning from World War II. For that project, he’d worked with the American GI Forum, the Congressionally chartered Hispanic veterans and civil rights organization that began supporting the mission of the Valenzuela brothers. Connections were made, and the camera started rolling.

“This was 12 years ago,” Valadez said. “Honestly at first, I didn’t know what to think. I was skeptical. I had never heard of veteran deportations. So we really had to spend some time together, where I could understand what was really going on.”

That fit perfectly with his style, though, “long-form documentary films” that follow a story to its natural conclusion.

Valadez said he couldn’t have imagined a more powerful David-and-Goliath tale for the times.

“Here are these two guys who are basically elderly veterans who are being deported. Manuel heads to the White House, (and) he’s going to confront Donald Trump. Talk about something that is just a quixotic quest,” said Valadez, a film instructor at Michigan State University.

The Valenzuelas’ fight against the deportation of U.S. veterans was never linear. It was always defined — and consistently re-defined — by political tides.

And yet, as the brothers traveled the country speaking to citizen and military groups and meeting with elected officials, a “tidal wave” was quietly building.

“Organizations slowly begin to get the message and get on board, so much so that while we were making the film, I got a call from the ACLU inviting us … to D.C. to give testimony at a Congressional briefing on deported veterans. We showed some clips of the film to senators and congresspeople and to their aides, and I‘ve got to tell you there was not a dry eye in the house. It was one of the most moving scenes I’ve seen in my life.”

The catharsis, however, didn’t make it onto parchment.

“After we did that (screening) we made some connections with people in Washington … and then nothing happened,” Valadez said. “That must have been six years ago. But then there was an election.”

Finally, after more than 12 years, the tides shifted in their favor.

“Biden took over the White House and as it turned out, he had a son Beau who served and I think that really deeply affects the president,” Valadez said.

On July 2, Biden ordered the Department of Homeland Security to immediately stop the deportation of U.S. military veterans and to create a process to bring back deported veterans and their families.

“His wording of the announcement, (was) almost verbatim what Manuel had been asking for,” Valadez said. “It’s almost a Mr. Smith goes to Washington kind of moment, where the little guy takes on city hall and against all odds … lo and behold, democracy can really work.”

The documentary featuring the Valenzuela brothers, “American Exile,” was already wrapped and queued up for a November premiere on PBS when President Biden announced the news that provided the perfect coda to a story that, at one point, seemed destined to defy anyone’s idea of a happy ending.

While not all of the veterans deported under the previous, long-term policy have returned home, Valadez said he has heard anecdotal reports that deported veterans are beginning to get letters from loved ones, that the process seems to be “well in motion.”

The Valenzuela brothers’ story is a political fable that stands out in modern times.

“Here we are … a couple of veterans and a lot of other people nobody has ever heard of, armed with only the truth and other factors, have actually changed national policy,” Valadez said. “This was an act not only of courage and bravery, but it was done on the part of others. Manuel is what I think Thomas Paine would call a ‘winter soldier’ — somebody who once they take that oath, they take it to heart.”