FORT JACKSON, S.C. - Sebastian Villaorduña hadn’t even sworn his oath of citizenship but he had already committed to fighting, and potentially dying, for America.

The 23-year-old had arrived in the United States from Peru only 18 months earlier, reuniting with his undocumented mother, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a decade.

On a drizzly morning in late November, he stood in formation with 121 soon-to-be soldiers hailing from five continents and more than a dozen countries. Soon they would graduate from Army basic training. First, though, they would become Americans.

All were clad in camouflage, their right hands raised, their eyes fixed on a laptop where a representative of the Citizenship and Immigration Services was leading them via Zoom through the naturalization oath of allegiance. Together, they accounted for about 10 percent of Sebastian’s basic training class.

A short distance away, a crowd of family members leaned over a chain-link fence, cellphones in hand, trying to catch a first glimpse of their loved ones who had left home 10 weeks earlier. The new citizens finished their oath. Lt. Col. Paul Hargrove, the basic training battalion commander, strode to the front of the formation.

“When I look at you, I see America,” he said, his voice booming. “I see the American story.”

Sebastian scanned the crowd on the other side of the fence, looking for the relatives who had come to see him graduate, especially his mother Daysi Wong.

She had left him with his grandparents in Peru when he was still in grade school, then made her way on foot from Mexico across the U.S. border. During their years apart, she had scraped together a new life in New Jersey, scrubbing floors and sending money home each month for Sebastian’s education. She had married a U.S. citizen and was raising two American children - Sebastian’s half-brothers - but still didn’t have a visa or work permit.

“My only goal was to bring my son,” Daysi said, “and I achieved it.”

What is the American story? What makes someone worthy of being an American? These questions seem certain to be debated fiercely during President-elect Donald Trump’s term. Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump demonized undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers as “animals,” “garbage” and criminals who were “poisoning the blood” of the country.

He falsely alleged that Democrats, including President Joe Biden, were importing such people from all over the world to vote illegally.

“They can’t even speak English,” Trump said. “They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically.” Trump has vowed once he’s president to undertake the “largest deportation operation in the nation’s history.”

Sebastian and his family’s story revealed a far more complicated truth about the country and the changes wrought over the past decade by waves of immigrants from across the globe. He and his mother had come to the United States fleeing political chaos, gangs and corruption. Both were still searching for their version of the American Dream. Sebastian, who was sponsored by his stepfather, came to the United States legally.

Hargrove dismissed the troops so that they could join their colleagues who were assembling for “family day,” a celebration in which the basic training troops would reunite with their loved ones. Their official graduation ceremony was scheduled for the following morning.

In the distance, Sebastian could see people filing into the parade ground stands. He could hear patriotic music playing. Sebastian saw the Army as a means to a different life. In exchange for belonging, opportunity and respect, he was offering his service, if necessary, in war.

“I’m not afraid of what’s inevitable - death,” he said.

Daysi had a different set of worries. She wondered whether Sebastian truly understood how hard it is to make it in America. Maybe, she sometimes thought, he would appreciate his adopted country more if he had crossed the border on foot, as she did, instead of on an airplane.

Maybe he would be better able to see the opportunities America could provide him if he had suffered more to get here.

What it takes to be a soldier

Before the citizenship ceremony, Hargrove asked Sebastian and the other troops in the formation to write a few sentences about the trials they had overcome and their reasons for joining the Army. Their words, he hoped, might serve as motivation for others struggling to make it through the loneliness and physical rigors of basic training.

A recruit from Venezuela wrote that he had trekked through “many countries” over the course of five years before finally arriving in the United States. “All this, because I wanted freedom and a regular life where I don’t have to worry if I am going to eat before bedtime,” his essay read.

Another described his father, who remains trapped in Nigeria, and his desire to bring him to America. “I want to get him out as [soon] as possible because of how dangerous things are over there,” he wrote. As a U.S. soldier and citizen, he could help his father emigrate.

Other recruits from Iran, Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Ghana wrote that they had joined the Army to get an education, help their children, obtain their citizenship or simply give back to the country that had offered them refuge.

In his short essay, Sebastian said he was seeking to find “a new purpose” and become a “better person.” After high school in Peru, Sebastian worked in a warehouse, earning $180 a month and waiting for a visa. “I felt like I was frozen,” he said.

At first, life in America wasn’t much better. He put in long hours at a restaurant on the Jersey Shore and practiced English with his half-brothers, ages 10 and 7, who adored him. He and his mother, after so many years apart, rebuilt their relationship and sometimes butted heads.

“You don’t know me well,” Daysi often reminded him, “and I don’t know you well.”

bSebastian had learned about the Army in June from one of his mother’s friends. A few days later, he and Daysi visited a recruiting station in Toms River, New Jersey. The Army was in the midst of an unprecedented recruiting crisis and desperately needed people just like him. By August, Sebastian was on his way to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for basic training and a new start as an American soldier.

Sebastian’s essay described his desire for independence and stability - a place where he could “eat, sleep and study.” He wrote that he was seeking an “opportunity to become someone important to this country and for my family.” In 2017, shortly after Trump was sworn in as president, the Pentagon mandated that troops like Sebastian serve at least six months in uniform before they could apply for citizenship. The Trump-era rules also called for expanded background checks. As a result, the number of military service members applying for citizenship plummeted to 2,500 in the 2018 fiscal year, a 78 percent drop from 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Biden administration officials changed the rules three years ago so that troops could become citizens upon completion of basic training. They reasoned it might help ease the military’s recruiting crisis. Anyone who pledges to fight and potentially die for a country deserves the right to vote, they argued. In fiscal year 2024, about 16,300 troops earned their citizenship.

Sebastian described his 10 weeks of basic training as a grueling experience. “Two long months of suffering,” he said. There were marches with 50-pound rucksacks, 30-second showers with drill sergeants screaming and an exercise called “the forge” in which

Sebastian said he spent several days in the cold and the rain, lying on his stomach in the mud with his gun. Other recruits skipped parts of the training because they were sick or injured. Sebastian, even though he was tired and sore, said he never asked for a break.

“Maybe I wasn’t one of the best or one of the first,” he said, “but I was one of the few people who did it all correctly.”

He was seven weeks into basic training when Trump won the presidency. Sebastian and the other recruits didn’t learn about Trump’s victory until the following Sunday when they were given access to their phones. Some of Sebastian’s fellow recruits predicted that the new president would boost their pay. Others suggested his bellicose rhetoric and promises to increase spending on new weapons would intimidate America’s enemies and produce an era of peace.

Sebastian said he didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about his new country’s politics. He was too focused on his training, which his drill sergeants told him would keep him alive if he were ever sent to war.

They often spoke about the characteristics that defined a good soldier. At the top of their list, Sebastian said, was “integrity.”

“You have to do the right thing, even when no one is looking,” Sebastian recalled them saying. This quality didn’t come from training or education, they said, but rather from the people who had raised them. In Sebastian’s case, that was the grandparents who cared for him after his mother left for the United States. “They gave me a lot of the values and principles that I’ve brought with me here,” he said.

After the citizenship ceremony, Sebastian and the other new Americans joined the other troops, who had assembled behind a cluster of pine trees at the edge of Fort Jackson’s main parade field. Sebastian’s family - his mother, half-brothers, stepfather and grandparents, who were visiting from Peru - were sitting in the metal bleachers with several thousand others.

They listened as Hargrove described how the last 10 weeks had made their loved ones stronger and more confident. As he was speaking, some soldiers set off smoke grenades. The families stomped their feet and cheered. Recorded rock music blared. “This is a perfect day to die,” the lead singer chanted. “Wipe the blood out of our eyes.”

Sebastian and the 1,206 other troops from his basic training battalion marched through the cloud of smoke. His family, along with everyone else in the bleachers, descended on the field. Sebastian’s 72-year-old grandmother, who hadn’t seen him since he left Peru more than a year earlier, held Daysi’s hand as she strode toward her grandson.

She wore a bulky, black jacket and a tan knit hat pulled over her ears. Her face was deeply lined and her posture slightly stooped from a hardscrabble life selling homemade food on the streets of Lima and raising six children in addition to Sebastian.

When she finally reached Sebastian, she cupped her grandson’s face in her hands and wiped away a tear as it rolled down his cheek.

‘I never looked back’

In the first months after he arrived in the United States, Sebastian would sometimes ask his mother why they never ate dinner together as a family. Sebastian’s stepfather often left the house at 3 a.m. for his construction job and sometimes didn’t return until 7 p.m. Daysi woke at 4 a.m. to cook and clean for her family before leaving for her housekeeping work.

“What am I supposed to do?” she recalled telling Sebastian.

Now they were all together at the 1917 Club, a buffet-style restaurant on the base, plates piled high with lasagna, meat loaf, mixed vegetables and pizza. There are so many ways to come to America; so many ways to become an American. Sebastian’s family encompassed many of them.

Daysi made the terrifying journey through the borderland desert and was detained by immigration officers. She recalled months in detention centers and years living on the margins of U.S. society.

Sebastian’s stepfather, Luis Wong, emigrated from Peru via the U.S. Diversity Immigrant Visa program - better known as the “Green Card lottery” - beating one in a hundred or worse odds and eventually becoming a citizen. He had met Daysi online when she was still living in Peru and took her in when she was on her own in the United States, deep in debt and scared, with no place to go.

Despite Daysi’s uncertain status in the country and Trump’s vow to deport as many as 1 million undocumented immigrants a year, Luis had voted for the former president. Daysi supported Trump too. She resented that the Biden administration had offered work permits and federal aid, such as SNAP benefits, to asylum seekers after only a few months in the United States. Daysi had been in the country for more than a decade, paid taxes and never received a penny of government assistance as her case worked its way through the immigration system.

“I’m working my tail off so they can take the easy route,” she said. Luis liked that Trump was promising to get rid of immigrants who broke the law in the United States or had violent criminal histories in their home countries. They were hurting the reputation of the entire Hispanic-American community. “For a few

Hispanics who do bad things, the other ones get judged,” he said.

Everyone at the table that afternoon was worried about Sebastian’s uncle, who had recently fled Peru, was stuck in southern Mexico and trying to find a way into the United States. They all hoped he would call soon.

Daysi sometimes worried that Sebastian didn’t understand how hard he would have to work and how much he would have to sacrifice to build a good life in this country.

Her American journey had been defined by years of struggle, starting with the perilous trek to America. Border agents detained her, and she spent four months in prison before she was released on bail to relatives in New Jersey, where she slept on the floor of their house and worked in their restaurant for less than minimum wage. She said she felt depressed, exploited and stuck. If she returned to Peru, she and her parents would never be able to pay back the thousands of dollars she had borrowed to come north. So she struck out on her own, moving in with Luis, a man she had chatted with online, but had never met.

At first, Luis didn’t tell Daysi he had a green card. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t with him for his papers. Only after the birth of their first child did she learn that he was a legal permanent resident on his way to becoming a citizen.

Gradually, Daysi and Luis built a life together, fell in love and married. “I have stability with my husband,” Daysi said. “We’ve never been bad to each other.”

Each month she sent money home to support Sebastian and pay off the debt from her journey. Without a green card or work permit, she often felt like a second-class citizen. When she learned a babysitter was hitting one of Sebastian’s young half-brothers, she didn’t report it to the police because she was scared of being deported or losing her kids. “I had to bite my tongue,” she said.

Her most painful sacrifice - the feeling of loss that never left her - was her separation from her son. After several years, Luis’s sister persuaded him to sponsor Sebastian for a green card. “She practically forced him to bring Sebastian,” Daysi said.

She saw her sister-in-law, who worked as a nurse in New Jersey, as a model of success. And now Daysi wanted to impart some of those lessons about America to Sebastian.

“I walked really far, and I never looked back,” she told her son. “Because if I looked back, it was as if I was giving up.”

“Si mama,” he replied.

But Daysi wasn’t sure he really understood. Before enlisting, Sebastian had begun dating a woman with two children. Daysi worried he would saddle himself with the burden of supporting a family on an Army private’s $27,000-a-year salary; that he would fail to seize the opportunities that she had fought so hard to provide him.

She recalled the years she spent walking to work and cleaning bathroom and kitchen floors. “I hope my sacrifice on my knees will have been worth it,” she said.

Sebastian disagreed that his pathway to America had been easy. He never had a relationship with his father and, in some ways, felt abandoned when Daysi departed. “You need affection and love when you’re young,” he said. “That’s something you can’t replace.”

He had already shown he would fight hard for his place in America, enduring 10 weeks of basic training. As a citizen and a soldier, he hoped he might be able to help Daysi finally get her residency papers and a work permit. “Amor de mi visa,” she called him jokingly, a play on the ‘amor de mi vida,’ or ‘love of my life.

The hardest part

Sebastian’s official graduation ceremony from basic training began early the next morning. Rows of recruits in their brown and olive Army dress uniforms marched onto the parade ground to the cadence of a bass and two snare drums.

An Army chaplain asked God to bless the new soldiers and celebrated their achievements. “You’ve taught each other that what is good must be sought after with great persistence and effort,” he said.

Daysi closed her eyes, bowed her head and said ‘Amen’ with the crowd. In the distance she could hear the pop, pop, pop of recruits firing their M4 rifles on the base’s range.

The soldiers, their drill sergeants and an Honor Guard carrying the American flag marched past the crowds of well-wishers and Fort Jackson’s senior leaders. Sebastian’s family, like those around them, stood out of respect for the flag.

When the ceremony ended, the families once again streamed onto the parade ground to find their soldiers, who were expected to stand at attention until a friend or relative touched them.

Sebastian’s grandmother pressed her face to his chest, inches from his brass button and nametag, and began to cry. Soon the family would head back to New Jersey and Sebastian’s grandparents would return to Peru.

During basic training, one of Sebastian’s drill sergeants had asked the recruits to describe one of their special skills or qualities. At first, Sebastian said he wasn’t sure what made him special. He wasn’t “the strongest person in the world,” he admitted. But he had learned since coming to America that he could adapt and persevere. “I went through moments where I felt like giving up, but I didn’t hit bottom,” he said. “I got up.”

A few days later, Daysi took Sebastian to Fort Gregg-Adams in Virginia, where he would begin his training for his Army job as a 91C, a utilities equipment repairer. The family wasn’t allowed inside the base, so they dropped him at the post’s front gate. Daysi could tell that her son was nervous, and so she wanted to say something that might reassure him.

“You’ve already gotten through the hardest part,” she told him.