Migration Detention and Deportation

The Humanizing Deportation team has published the book Humanizando la deportación: Narrativas digitales desde las calles de Tijuana, coordinated by GMC Deputy Director Robert McKee Irwin and the late Guillermo Alonso Meneses (El Colegio de la Frontera Norte). This book, whose seven chapters, written by members of the transnational research team, draw principally from the fieldwork of the project's inaugural team in 2017, will be launched officially in November at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, and presented later this academic year at the Global Migration Center. Cover art by deported migrant Emma Sánchez de Paulsen. 

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Abstract

While an extensive body of literature has analyzed the spillover and intergenerational consequences of mass incarceration, fewer studies explore the consequences of a parallel system: mass immigration detention. Every year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement imprisons hundreds of thousands of noncitizens as they await adjudication on their deportation proceedings, sometimes for months or years at a time. Many detained individuals have lived in the United States for decades and have spouses and/or dependent children that rely on them. This analysis brings together research on immigrant families, mass incarceration, and system avoidance to examine the spillover consequences of immigration detention. Using a multigenerational and multi-perspective research design, we analyze 104 interviews conducted in California with detained parents, non-detained spouses/partners, and their school-age children. Findings suggest that members of these mixed-status families may limit their engagement with surveilling institutions during a family member’s detention. These experiences are rooted in what we call compounded vulnerability—that is, both in the experience of parental/spousal confinement but also as members of mixed-immigration-status families facing the possibility of deportation.

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Abstract

This study provides the first systematic, nationally representative analysis of administrative records of solitary confinement placements in any carceral setting. We examine patterns in who experiences solitary confinement in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, as well as the stated reason for, and length of, their confinement. We reveal several findings. First, cases involving individuals with mental illnesses are overrepresented, more likely to occur without infraction, and to last longer, compared to cases involving individuals without mental illnesses. Second, solitary confinement cases involving immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are vastly overrepresented in comparison to the share of these groups in the overall detained population, and African immigrants are more likely to be confined for disciplinary reasons, compared to the average. Finally, placement patterns vary significantly by facility and institution type, with private facilities more likely to solitarily confine people without infraction, compared to public facilities. This study offers a lens through which to more precisely theorize the legal boundary-blurring of crimmigration and the relationship between prison and immigration detention policies, to better understand the practice of solitary confinement across carceral contexts, and to analyze the relationship between national-level policy and on-the-ground implementation.

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Abstract

The article focuses on violence experienced by two deported Mexican migrants, both community collaborators from the Humanizing Deportation project, and their paradoxical responses to their repatriation, which allow them the sense of freedom of living off the grid, effectively extending their experiences as undocumented migrants in their homeland, while also subjecting them to extreme precarity, or even death, in the shadow of the highly militarized border wall in Tijuana.

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We examine the consequences of a significant return-migration episode, during which at least 400,000 Mexicans returned to Mexico between 1929 and 1934, on U.S. workers’ labor market outcomes. To identify a causal effect, we instrument the county-level drop in Mexican population with the size of the Mexican communities in 1910 and its interaction with proxies of repatriation costs. Using individual-level linked Census data from 1930–1940, we find that Mexican repatriations resulted in reduced employment and occupational downgrading for U.S. natives. These patterns were stronger for low-skilled workers and for workers in urban locations.

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Abstract

Every year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement imprisons hundreds of thousands of noncitizens as they await adjudication on their deportation proceedings. Importantly, many detained individuals have lived in the interior of the country for many years and are parents of young, dependent, school-age children living in the United States. This analysis brings together and builds upon research on parental incarceration and international migration. We analyze 104 multigenerational interviews conducted in California with detained parents, their current or former nondetained spouses/partners, and the school-age children they share. Our findings suggest that children’s academic trajectories are seriously disrupted by the trauma, stigma, and strain of parental imprisonment. Moreover, these vulnerabilities are enhanced in unique ways by children’s positionality as members of mixed-immigration-status families facing the possibility of deportation. Our findings suggest that parental immigration detention can have intergenerational consequences for children’s mobility that disrupt traditional pathways of immigrant integration in mixed-immigration-status families.

Link to the paper

Abstract:
The ascendency of immigration as an issue in elections has been concomitant with massive increases in the Hispanic population in the U.S. We examine how immigration cues prompt greater or lesser levels of restrictionist sentiment among individuals, showing demographic context conditions the effect of candidates cues. Using data from the 2010 U.S. House elections, we illustrate cues presented in new destination states—states with massive increases in the size of the Hispanic population from 1990 to 2010—have a larger impact on individuals’ immigration preferences than cues presented in non-new destination contexts. We show candidates with more extreme immigration positions are more likely to prioritize the issue of immigration in their campaigns, suggesting campaign prioritization of immigration has a directional cue. We conclude these directional cues from Republican candidates in new destination contexts move individual attitudes toward restrictionist preferences.