Music producer J-Sw!ft stuck in Vancouver while facing deportation to Spain

WATCH: An American music producer is stuck in Vancouver and is facing the threat of deportation to Spain. Nadia Stewart explains Juan Martinez’s complicated situation.

For the last two months, California music producer Juan Martinez – better known as J-Sw!ft to his fans – has been stuck in Vancouver.

Born in Spain but a resident of America since the age of two, he’s facing deportation back to Spain as a result of previous drug charges. He was denied back entry to the United States during a business trip he said the government had approved.

“You kind of feel displaced. My life is in America,” he says. Martinez’s struggles with cocaine abuse were chronicled in a 2011 documentary, but he says he’s been clean for years.

“I got to the airport, presented the same papers I’ve used to travel, and they said ‘no, you’re not allowed to come back in.'”

Martinez says he had filed an appeal for a 2012 arrest for drug possession that sparked the original proceedings, and in the years since, he had traveled to Europe and Canada with the music group Pharcyde without incident.

“My lawyers assured me that as long as I went through the proper process, that I would not be denied entry,” he said.

“They said I wasn’t supposed to be in Canada, but they gave me a permit to work here.”

Now, a group of Vancouver musicians are doing what they can to help him get back to America, organizing a benefit concert this weekend to help cover the mounting legal costs.

Martinez is scheduled to appear at a Refugee Board hearing on March 26. He’s hopeful the end result will allow him to return to California, where his wife and four children live.

“You can’t explain to a child legal fees and all this other stuff. I miss them dearly,” he says.

“I fought the hardest problem I ever had in my life, and I beat it. And then it comes back again. But it’s always a fight, you just got to keep fighting for what you believe in.”