"We have to stop military recruiters from harassing these boys at school, and if any of them want to sign up, they should do so out of their own free will, not because of economic and psychological pressures or even lies," Suarez told AFP.

Hailing from Tijuana, Mexico, 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of here, Suarez got together with school teachers, student unions and veterans groups to create the Aztec Warrior Project to raise awareness among young Hispanic and to take on the Pentagon.

The anti-recruitment activists are also watching a bill proposed in the US Congress that would extend permanent residency to the sons of illegal aliens who either attend two years of university or sign up for two years with the military.

Under the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, they would attain US citizenship after six years of conditional status or if they die in combat.

The measure may be enticing to some of the 12 million illegal immigrants and their children living in the United States, and has the full backing of the Pentagon, which is finding it hard to keep its recruitment goals during the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Hispanics are the perfect cannon fodder, and signing up for military service is much easier than going to university, which is for rich people," Suarez said.

As he celebrated his son Jesus' would-be 25th birthday, Suarez said he would forever regret he could not talk him out of joining the Marines at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. He blames it all on recruitment campaign promises.

"The arguments put forth by the recruiters were very good: opportunities for professional development, helping your family along (financially) and a path to citizenship."

He said that after signing up, Jesus quickly caught on he hadn't been told the whole truth. But "getting out (of military service) is not easy, it's a David-and-Goliath struggle because they make you sign papers to commit you to the ranks, and when you have second thoughts you have to get a lawyer, and that's expensive."

Jorge Mariscal, who heads the Chicano and Latino Studies Department at the University of California at San Diego, said recruitment efforts target "public schools with Hispanic or black majorities."

Mariscal, an activist with the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, known as YANO, also refuted US official jargon that Hispanics are "proud and honored" to serve in the military.

"That's a total lie. Recruitment efforts in the United States target the most vulnerable classes, and in the case of Hispanic, Mexican and Central American communities they convince them with promises of a better future," he said.

When he died, Jesus Suarez automatically became a US citizen, allowing him to be buried as an American soldier.

Suarez said when he asked to see his son's body after it was shipped back from Iraq, the Pentagon refused, telling him his face had been blown apart in combat.

Suarez insisted his son get a civilian funeral and after hounding the soldiers guarding Jesus' casket at an Escondido cemetery, he got them to open it, finding that his son's face was intact, but that his extremities had been blown off.

He is still battling the Pentagon to get a full explanation of how his son died.

Suarez said he tells Hispanic teenagers that "the posthumous citizenship offered by the military, is to ensure all fallen soldiers get a military funeral, like the (US) Constitution stipulates for its heroes, as all soldiers who die in combat are called."

"The ironic thing," said professor Mariscal, "is that while the Pentagon seeks non-US citizens to fill the ranks of the occupying forces of the United States, other non-citizen workers (illegal aliens), whose economic contribution to this country is undeniable, are hunted and harassed by other US government agencies for deportation."

Now Suarez and his group make their rounds in public schools and Hispanic neighborhoods in San Diego, where one in three of its two million inhabitants are Hispanic, telling young people to open their eyes before joining the military.

"I'm doing this for my son who died in Iraq -- where I told him not to go, in the first place. It's my crusade against the recruitment of our boys," he said.