When the end is the beginning: the effect of criminal infractions and post-deportation outcomes on perceived fairness and blame attribution in deportation cases

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Speaker: Brad Jones, Professor, Political Science, UC Davis

Abstract

Journalist Sarah Stillman tells the story of Laura S., an undocumented immigrant living in Texas in 2009.  While driving home one night, she was pulled over, allegedly for driving between lanes on a Texas highway.  When asked to provide proof of residence, she indicated she had none.  Panicking, Laura S. pleaded with the police officer that she could not be returned to Mexico because she had a protection order against her ex-husband.  Her return would result in her death.   Despite her pleas, the police officer called U.S. Border Patrol).  After being detained, she was quickly deported to Mexico. In June of 2009, a week after her removal, Laura S.' remains were recovered in Reynoso, Mexico. Her ex-husband strangled her and doused her body in gasoline.  (Stillman 2019).  The legal infraction of driving between lanes led to her deportation.  Her deportation led to her death.

Deportation--the forced expulsion of individuals from the state--is, and has been, a central feature of U.S. immigration policy for over 150 years.  As Slack (2019) notes, it is among the most powerful expressions of state authority, giving it the ultimate power to determine who stays and who must go.   As such, it is a policy that has explicit existential implications: forced {\em physical} removal.  It is also a largely hidden policy.  To be sure, highly visible debates have emerged around deportation policy, most recently centering on Title 42 removals, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and the contentiousness surrounding Sanctuary Cities; nonetheless, apart from these examples, most Americans  likely pay little attention to how deportation policies are implemented, are likely to be personally unaffected by deportation, and, no doubt for many, are content with deportation policies because of the seemingly compelling logic that only those "who break the law" are removed.  Unfortunately, this simple rendering of deportation policy ("only the criminals are removed") belies realities about the U.S. immigration system and its deportation apparatus.  While for most Americans, deportation marks a final end for the unpleasant problems associated with undocumented immigrants, for deportees, their families, and communities, this "ending" is just the beginning.

In this paper, we are interested in understanding how individuals' support for deportation and their willingness to attribute blame to the deportee for what happens is related to narratives about why an individual is deported and what happens to an individual after deportation.  In 4 studies, we demonstrate  support for removal and dispositional blaming of an undocumented immigrant for her/his fate is strongly related to the narrative for why the immigrant was removed (i.e. the legal infraction that prompted deportation) as well as informational cues about what happens to the deportee after removal (i.e. information about the immigrant's death). We find, serious legal infractions compared to less serious infractions induce significantly greater support for removal and higher rates of dispositional blame; however, when post-deportation information about the immigrant's death is provided, support for removal and levels of dispositional blame decrease.  However, we also find that attitudes about system justification, fairness and harm, as well as party affiliation impact judgment and in some cases, moderate the impact of informational cues related to legal infractions and post-deportation outcomes.  These results have substantial policy implications: if deportation policies can be contextualized, support for them likely drops.