deportation and removal from the United States

Deportation from the United States is the process of expelling non-citizens. The authority to deport non-citizens rests on the "plenary power" of the federal government, which gives it near-absolute authority over immigration matters. The legal framework for deportation distinguishes between two primary models: "extended border control", which involves expelling non-citizens for violations related to their entry, and "post-entry social control", which targets individuals for conduct, such as criminal activity, that occurs after they have established residence in the country. Between 1920 and 2018, the U.S. expelled nearly 57 million people, more than any other country in the world, and more people than it allowed to immigrate legally. The legal and political concept of the "illegal alien" is a 20th-century development; the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 created a new class of people subject to expulsion.

The deportation machine, as it has been called, has historically used three primary mechanisms of expulsion: formal deportation (removals), voluntary departure, and self-deportation. Formal deportations, which carry legal penalties for reentry, account for a minority of expulsions. The vast majority have occurred through voluntary departure, an administrative process in which immigration authorities coerce apprehended individuals into leaving the country. Self-deportation occurs when migrants leave due to fear campaigns, intimidation, and the enforcement of laws that make it difficult to remain.

The origins of federal deportation policy are rooted in early colonial practices and later formalized in the late 19th-century anti-Chinese movement. While early targets included Chinese laborers and European political radicals, the history of deportation has become overwhelmingly the history of removing Mexicans, who since the 1970s have accounted for about 90 percent of all deportees. The deportation process has been shaped by a complex interplay of bureaucratic imperatives, profit motives, racial prejudice, and political calculations, and has had profound consequences for individuals, families, and communities.

History

Antecedents to federal deportation

The modern U.S. deportation system was built upon a long history of exclusion and forced removal that predates the federal government. English colonial authorities in North America adapted practices from the mother country, such as laws for the transportation of convicts and the " warning out" systems used to control the movement of the poor. The first major deportation of European settlers occurred in the 1750s, when the British forcibly expelled some 8,000 Acadians from what is now Nova Scotia.

After independence, the first federal law authorizing the expulsion of non-citizens was the Alien Friends Act of 1798. The law gave the president discretionary power to deport any non-citizen he deemed "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States". Though never formally enforced, the Act prompted a fierce debate over federal power, states' rights, and the constitutional protections afforded to non-citizens, with figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison arguing that it was an unconstitutional overreach of executive authority.

Throughout the 19th century, other systems of forced removal served as conceptual and legal models for the later federal deportation regime. The removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands, legitimized by a plenary power doctrine that gave the federal government near-absolute authority over Indian affairs, established a legal precedent for the forced movement of a non-citizen population residing within U.S. territory. Similarly, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 created a large, federally administered bureaucracy dedicated to the capture and forced return of people based on their legal status and race, a system that in many ways prefigured the mechanisms of 20th-century deportation.

Origins and the anti-Chinese movement (late 19th century)

Before the last decades of the 19th century, the federal government had little control over immigration. State governments had the authority to banish people, a power they used to remove groups like Irish Catholics and paupers. This system of local control began to change with the rise of the anti-Chinese movement, which provided the impetus for the creation of a federal deportation machine.

Chinese migrants first arrived in large numbers during the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, providing essential labor for railroads, mines, and other industries in the American West. By 1880, over 105,000 Chinese people lived in the United States. Many white Americans, however, viewed the growing Chinese population as an existential threat, a "heathen" and "uncivilized" race that was incapable of assimilation. In response to this sentiment and sustained political pressure from anti-coolie clubs and nativist groups like the Workingmen's Party of California, Congress passed the Page Act of 1875, which barred Asian contract laborers and women suspected of prostitution.

Dissatisfied with the limited scope of the Page Act, anti-Chinese activists began taking matters into their own hands, pioneering methods of mass expulsion through coordinated violence and intimidation. Between 1885 and 1886, at least 168 communities in the American West carried out campaigns to expel their Chinese residents. In Truckee, California, community leaders including local newspaper editor Charles Fayette McGlashan orchestrated a "peaceful" self-deportation campaign known as the "Truckee method". It relied on economic boycotts of anyone who employed or patronized Chinese residents, combined with incendiary scare tactics and the ever-present threat of violence, to drive out the town's Chinese population. These local campaigns, which pushed more than 15,000 Chinese people out of the country, demonstrated the effectiveness of self-deportation as an expulsion strategy.

The grassroots movement pressured the federal government to enact broader restrictions. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years. Six years later, the Scott Act made it illegal for Chinese laborers to reenter the United States, nullifying over 20,000 return certificates previously issued to Chinese migrants. When laborer Chae Chan Ping was denied reentry and challenged the law, the Supreme Court ruled against him in '' Chae Chan Ping v. United States'' (1889). The court found that the federal government's authority to regulate immigration was not based on an explicit provision of the Constitution but on its status as a sovereign nation. This "inherent sovereign powers" or "plenary power" doctrine gave Congress near-absolute authority to exclude and expel non-citizens. In 1892, the Geary Act extended the exclusion of Chinese laborers for another ten years and required all Chinese residents to obtain a certificate of residence, facing arrest and deportation if they failed to register. The Chinese community organized a mass protest and legal challenge, but the Supreme Court again ruled against them in '' Fong Yue Ting v. United States'' (1893), affirming that deportation was not a punishment for a crime but an administrative procedure. This decision stripped non-citizens facing expulsion of basic constitutional protections like the right to due process and established that the power to expel was as "absolute and unqualified" as the power to exclude.

Federal bureaucracy and early expulsions (1891–1924)

The Immigration Act of 1891 marked a major shift from state-level control to a centralized federal system by creating a new superintendent of immigration within the Department of the Treasury. The law expanded the list of deportable classes to include people "likely to become a public charge", those with contagious diseases, and polygamists. It also gave immigration officials final authority in their decisions by exempting them from judicial review, a provision upheld by the Supreme Court in '' Nishimura Ekiu v. United States'' (1892). Over the next two decades, the list of deportable classes expanded further to include political radicals, criminals, and those deemed morally suspect. The Immigration Act of 1903 was used to target anarchists like John Turner, and the Immigration Act of 1917 expanded the government's power by creating a "barred zone" that excluded most Asians and by increasing the statute of limitations for deportation to five years for some offenses. The government used these new powers during the First Red Scare (1919–1920) to carry out the Palmer Raids against suspected radicals, apprehending some 10,000 people and formally deporting hundreds, including the prominent anarchist Emma Goldman.

Despite the expansion of the bureaucracy and its powers, formal deportation remained a cumbersome and expensive process. This led officials to develop ad-hoc, informal expulsion mechanisms. The most significant of these was voluntary departure, a process in which officials coerced apprehended migrants to leave "on their own" by agreeing to waive a formal deportation hearing. Though not officially tracked by the government until 1927, archival records show that officials relied on voluntary departure as early as 1907. It proved an expeditious and cost-effective tool, particularly along the southern border, where it was easier to send migrants back to Mexico than to ship them across an ocean. Between 1918 and 1921, as migration from Mexico increased, voluntary departures surged. During this period, federal authorities carried out nearly 20,000 voluntary departures of Mexicans, more than three times the number of formal deportations of all nationalities combined. By the late 1910s, the typical deportee was a Mexican who had entered the country without inspection.

Rise of the "illegal alien" (1924–1965)

The Immigration Act of 1924 (also known as the Johnson-Reed Act) fundamentally altered the landscape of U.S. immigration and deportation. The act established a system of national origins quotas that severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, completely barred immigration from Asia, but placed no numerical limits on migration from the Western Hemisphere. While intended to engineer the racial composition of the nation, the law's most enduring legacy was the creation of the "illegal alien" as a new political and legal category. Before 1924, the concept of illegal immigration was limited, primarily concerning those who violated qualitative restrictions like bans on prostitutes or political radicals. The 1924 Act, by imposing numerical limits, meant that for the first time, large numbers of people could be in the country illegally simply by their presence. This new legal framework, combined with increased enforcement along the U.S.–Mexico border and the establishment of the U.S. Border Patrol, laid the groundwork for the mass expulsion campaigns of the following decades.

Great Depression and repatriation

The Great Depression led to a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment, with widespread scapegoating of Mexicans for economic woes. In response, federal, state, and local officials launched large-scale self-deportation campaigns, known as the Mexican Repatriation, to pressure Mexicans and Mexican Americans to leave the country. William N. Doak, the Secretary of Labor under President Herbert Hoover, orchestrated a national campaign of fear, using immigration raids on homes, workplaces, and public spaces to create a "gladiatorial spectacle" of "alien hunting". In Los Angeles, officials announced raids in major English- and Spanish-language newspapers to "scare many thousand alien deportables" into leaving. These tactics, which relied on rumors, intimidation, and the cooperation of local police, proved highly effective. Between 1929 and 1939, as many as half a million Mexicans and Mexican Americans were repatriated, with the vast majority leaving not through formal deportation, but through self-deportation and voluntary departure.

Bracero Program and Operation Wetback

After World War II, the demand for cheap agricultural labor led to the creation of the Bracero Program (1942–1964), a series of binational agreements that brought millions of Mexican men to the United States as temporary guest workers. The program, however, existed alongside and contributed to a rise in unauthorized migration, creating what became known as the "wetback crisis" in the early 1950s. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration launched Operation Wetback, a massive military-style campaign by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) designed to apprehend and expel Mexicans. Led by General Joseph M. Swing, the operation relied on a combination of raids, publicity campaigns, and large-scale expulsions to create a climate of fear.

While the operation involved formal deportations, the vast majority of the over one million expulsions in 1954 were voluntary departures. The INS also used a brutal method of expulsion known as the boatlift, contracting with private Mexican shipping companies to transport deportees from Port Isabel, Texas, across the Gulf of Mexico to Veracruz. The conditions on these ships, which were often repurposed cargo vessels, were abysmal, with deportees crowded into holds with little food, water, or sanitation. The journey, which could last up to forty-eight hours, was intended to traumatize migrants and deter them from returning. This commodification of deportation, which prioritized profit and punishment, inflicted severe physical and psychological hardship on hundreds of thousands of Mexicans.

Discretionary relief for Europeans

In contrast to the mass expulsions targeting Mexicans, European non-citizens who were in the country illegally during the same period often benefited from administrative discretion that allowed them to legalize their status. Under the Alien Registration Act of 1940, the government began to offer what became known as the "pre-examination" program. This procedure allowed certain non-citizens who were deportable but considered of "good moral character" to "pre-examine" for legal admission, leave the country (often to Canada), and then re-enter with a valid visa as a lawful permanent resident. This process effectively "unmade" their illegal status. Between 1925 and 1965, an estimated 200,000 Europeans, including those who had committed minor crimes, legalized their status through pre-examination, suspension of deportation, or the Registry Act of 1929. These forms of relief were largely unavailable to Mexicans and Asians, highlighting the racialized application of deportation law and contributing to the construction of the "illegal alien" as a non-white figure.

Cold War and ideological deportations

The post-war era and the rise of the Cold War saw a new wave of ideological deportations targeting alleged Communists and political dissidents. Building on the anti-radical provisions of the 1917 and 1918 acts, the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (also known as the McCarran-Walter Act) expanded the government's power to deport non-citizens for their political beliefs and associations, including for past membership in the Communist Party. The Supreme Court upheld these laws in cases like '' Harisiades v. Shaughnessy'' (1952) and '' Galvan v. Press'' (1954), ruling that deportation was not punishment and that non-citizens, even long-term lawful residents, remained in the country as a matter of "permission and tolerance", not of right.

This period was marked by prolonged deportation sagas against high-profile figures. The government spent decades attempting to deport Australian-born labor leader Harry Bridges for his alleged Communist ties, a battle that involved multiple hearings, congressional intervention, and Supreme Court cases before Bridges ultimately prevailed. Another target was alleged mafia boss Carlos Marcello, whose case illustrated the government's determination to use deportation as a tool against organized crime. After years of legal maneuvering, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy orchestrated Marcello's summary removal to Guatemala in 1961, an act that was later criticized as a "kidnapping". These cases highlighted the use of deportation for political ends and the immense discretionary power wielded by the executive branch.

"Age of mass expulsion" (1965–present)

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Celler Act) marked a significant shift in U.S. immigration policy. It abolished the national origins quota system and replaced it with a system of preferences based on family relationships and job skills. The law, however, also imposed a numerical cap on immigration from the Western Hemisphere for the first time. This new restriction, combined with the end of the Bracero Program, led to a dramatic increase in unauthorized migration from Mexico. Between 1965 and 1985, the INS carried out nearly 13 million expulsions, with voluntary departures accounting for 97 percent of the total. This period witnessed the normalization of the deportation machine, with the "revolving door" of apprehension and voluntary departure becoming a constant feature of life for many Mexican migrants.

Immigrant rights movement

In response to the escalating deportations and what they saw as racist and discriminatory enforcement, a new immigrant rights movement emerged in the 1970s. Led by grassroots organizations like CASA (Centro de Acción Social Autónomo) and supported by labor unions and the Catholic Church, the movement challenged the deportation machine through a combination of public protest, legal action, and community organizing. Activists conducted know-your-rights campaigns, distributing pamphlets that advised migrants on how to assert their constitutional rights, such as the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. They also organized demonstrations, picket lines, and legal challenges to contest factory raids and the INS's use of racial profiling.

A landmark class-action lawsuit, ''Vallejo v. Sureck'', filed after a 1978 raid on the Sbicca of California shoe factory, became a focal point of this resistance. The legal team, which included Peter Schey and Mark Rosenbaum, argued that the INS's practice of coercing migrants into signing voluntary departure forms without advising them of their rights was unconstitutional. The case, which took 14 years to resolve, resulted in a historic settlement in 1992 that required the INS to inform all apprehended individuals of their legal rights, including the right to a deportation hearing and the right to consult a lawyer.

Militarization and criminalization

The passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) marked another turning point. While the law granted amnesty to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, it also significantly ramped up border enforcement and introduced employer sanctions for knowingly hiring unauthorized workers. This began a new era of militarization along the U.S.–Mexico border, with the construction of walls and fences and a massive increase in the size and budget of the Border Patrol. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) further intensified this punitive turn. The act broadened the definition of deportable offenses, expanded the use of expedited removal, and severely limited judicial review of deportation orders. It also created the legal category of "aggravated felony", which made a wide range of crimes, including non-violent offenses, grounds for mandatory detention and deportation.

The September 11 attacks in 2001 accelerated these trends, leading to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the further conflation of immigration with national security. The USA PATRIOT Act expanded the government's surveillance powers and authority to detain non-citizens indefinitely. The enforcement-first approach of the Bush administration resulted in policies like Operation Streamline, which mandated the criminal prosecution of individuals for unauthorized entry, and the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the border. The period also saw a boom in the private prison industry, which profited from the massive expansion of immigration detention. By 2016, corporations like CoreCivic and the GEO Group operated the majority of immigration detention beds and spent millions on lobbying for stricter enforcement policies.

The Obama administration continued many of these policies, expanding interior enforcement through the Secure Communities program, which linked local police databases to federal immigration databases. This led to a record number of formal removals, with nearly 3 million people deported during his presidency, earning him the moniker "deporter-in-chief" from some immigrant rights activists. The administration also oversaw the deportation of asylum seekers fleeing violence in Central America, a crisis fueled in part by past U.S. foreign policy in the region. In response to activist pressure, however, Obama also used executive action to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, which provided temporary protection from deportation for hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth brought to the U.S. as children.

Trump administrations and "zero tolerance"

The first presidency of Donald Trump marked a radicalization of deportation policy. His administration deployed concerted fear campaigns and virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric to encourage self-deportation, a key plank of its enforcement strategy. Trump ended the Obama-era policy of prosecutorial discretion, making all undocumented immigrants a priority for removal. At the border, the administration implemented a "zero tolerance" policy, leading to the criminal prosecution of all adults who crossed without authorization and the systematic separation of thousands of children from their parents. The policy caused what the American Academy of Pediatrics called "irreparable harm" to children and created a humanitarian crisis. Although a federal court ordered the families to be reunited, the government had no effective system in place to do so, and many families remained separated.

The presidency of Joe Biden was marked by an initial reversal of his predecessor's policies, including the termination of the " Remain in Mexico" program and the halting of border wall construction. However, the administration continued to use the Title 42 public health authority invoked during the COVID-19 pandemic to carry out mass expulsions for over two years before the policy ended in May 2023. It was replaced by a new regulatory framework, the "Circumvention of Lawful Pathways" rule, which established a "rebuttable presumption of ineligibility" for asylum for most migrants who crossed the border without authorization after transiting through a third country. This new regime heavily relied on the use of the CBP One mobile application for migrants to schedule appointments at ports of entry, a system criticized for creating a "technological bordering" that presented significant barriers for vulnerable individuals. Amid sustained high levels of border crossings, the administration increasingly relied on externalizing enforcement to Mexico and, in June 2024, issued a sweeping executive order to suspend asylum processing when daily encounters exceeded a certain threshold, a move that critics noted was functionally similar to a previous Trump-era ban.

Proposals for a second Trump administration centered on executing the largest domestic deportation operation in the nation's history. The plans called for using federal, state, and local law enforcement, as well as the National Guard and potentially military resources, to apprehend and remove millions of undocumented immigrants. The strategy would involve bypassing the immigration court system by relying heavily on expedited removal and invoking powers under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. To manage those awaiting expulsion, plans included the construction of large-scale detention facilities. The administration would also aim to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, a move that would challenge the long-standing interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. This enforcement-only approach would eliminate prosecutorial discretion, making all undocumented individuals a priority for removal and expanding the criminalization of immigration status itself.

Mechanisms of expulsion

The deportation machine, as it has been called, has historically used three primary mechanisms of expulsion: formal deportation (removals), voluntary departure, and self-deportation. Formal deportations, which carry legal penalties for reentry, account for a minority of expulsions. The vast majority have occurred through voluntary departure, an administrative process in which immigration authorities coerce apprehended individuals into leaving the country. Self-deportation occurs when migrants leave due to fear campaigns, intimidation, and the enforcement of laws that make it difficult to remain. These mechanisms, while distinct, have often functioned in concert, driven by a combination of bureaucratic imperatives, profit motives, and political calculations.

Formal deportation (removals)

Formal deportation, known in modern bureaucratic parlance as "removal", is the compulsory and confirmed movement of a non-citizen out of the United States based on a legal order. It is an administrative, not criminal, procedure, a distinction established by the Supreme Court in '' Fong Yue Ting v. United States'' (1893). This ruling stripped non-citizens facing expulsion of many constitutional protections, such as the right to a jury trial, on the grounds that deportation is not a punishment for a crime.

The process of formal deportation has historically been cumbersome and expensive. It traditionally began with an investigation by immigration officials, often based on tips from police, charitable organizations, or individuals. If apprehended, a non-citizen would face a hearing before a board of special inquiry or an immigration judge. While the government bears the burden of proving deportability with "clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence", this standard is often met through the interrogation of the non-citizen, who may not have been advised of their rights. A formal order of deportation has significant legal consequences, including a ban on reentry that can last from five years to life.

Beginning in the late 20th century, lawmakers developed streamlined administrative procedures to expedite formal removals, limiting access to judicial review. These include "expedited removals", which apply to non-citizens apprehended near the border; "reinstatement of removal" for those with prior deportation orders; and "stipulated removal", which allows a judge to order expulsion without a hearing.

Voluntary departure

Voluntary departure, also known as "informal deportation" or "return", is the most common form of expulsion in U.S. history, accounting for 85 percent of the nearly 57 million expulsions between 1920 and 2018. It is a process in which an apprehended non-citizen agrees to leave the country at their own expense, waiving their right to a formal deportation hearing. Although the term suggests a choice, the process is coercive. It is, as the Department of Homeland Security has noted, "required and verified".

Immigration officials have long relied on voluntary departure to sidestep the costly and time-consuming process of formal deportation. It allows them to remove large numbers of people quickly and cheaply, without the need for arrest warrants, administrative hearings, or judicial review. For the non-citizen, agreeing to voluntary departure minimizes time spent in detention and avoids the legal bar on reentry associated with a formal deportation order. This mechanism became the primary tool for expelling Mexicans, particularly after the establishment of the Border Patrol in 1924, as it was easier to return someone across a land border than to arrange for transoceanic passage. By the 1950s, voluntary departures outnumbered formal deportations by a ratio of fifty-six to one.

Self-deportation

Self-deportation occurs when migrants leave the United States not because of a direct administrative order, but in response to concerted campaigns of fear and the implementation of hostile laws that make it difficult to remain in the country. This mechanism has deep roots in American history, predating the nation itself. The " warning out" system in colonial New England, for instance, involved officials notifying newcomers that they had to leave town by a certain date or face forcible removal. While some ignored the notices, many others chose to depart preemptively.

In the late 19th century, anti-Chinese activists pioneered modern self-deportation strategies. The "Truckee method", developed in 1885, used a combination of economic boycotts against employers of Chinese workers, public shaming, and the threat of violence to drive out the town's Chinese population. This model of "attrition through enforcement" has been replicated throughout U.S. history. During the Great Depression, federal and local officials launched large-scale "repatriation" campaigns that used immigration raids and sensationalized media coverage to "scare many thousand alien deportables" into leaving. More recently, the passage of state-level anti-immigrant laws, such as Arizona's SB 1070 in 2010, has been a part of a strategy to make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they "self-deport".

Operational machinery

The deportation machine is operated by a complex and evolving operational machinery composed of federal bureaucracies, local and private partners, a vast physical infrastructure, and ever-advancing technologies of surveillance and control.

Federal bureaucracy and discretionary power

At the heart of the deportation machine is a federal bureaucracy that has grown in size and scope since its creation in 1891. Initially a small office within the Treasury Department (later transferred to the Commerce and Labor Department in 1903 and Labor Department in 1913), it evolved into the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 1933 and was later absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, with its enforcement functions split primarily between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Throughout its history, this bureaucracy has been granted tremendous discretionary power. Low-level officials have been empowered to act as "judge and jury", making unilateral decisions about who to expel, often through the coercive use of voluntary departure. This discretion has allowed officials on the ground to "shape ideas about what it meant to be American along the lines of race and class, politics and culture".

While high-level officials set policy and priorities, the day-to-day operation of the machine has often been driven by the actions of individual officers. In the early 20th century, inspectors in the field made ad-hoc decisions about whether to offer voluntary departure, weighing bureaucratic efficiency against the legal requirement for formal hearings. This " prosecutorial discretion" remains a central feature of the system, allowing officials to make choices about whom to target, what charges to bring, and what form of expulsion to use.

Cooperation with local and private actors

The federal deportation machine has never operated in a vacuum. From its inception, it has relied on cooperation with state and local authorities, as well as private entities. In the early 20th century, the Bureau of Immigration received tips from local police, hospitals, and charitable organizations to identify individuals for deportation. During the mass expulsion campaigns of the Great Depression and Operation Wetback, local police departments and sheriff's offices actively participated in immigration raids. This collaboration has been formalized in the contemporary era through programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) agreements, which deputize local law enforcement to act as immigration agents and link local police databases with federal immigration databases.

Private industry has also played a crucial and profitable role. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shipping companies, which had profited from transporting migrants to the United States, also contracted with the government to transport deportees. This "business of deportation" expanded to include railroads, bus lines, and eventually, private airlines. This profit motive has continued into the 21st century with the rise of the private prison industry. Corporations like CoreCivic and the GEO Group operate the majority of immigration detention facilities in the United States, spending millions on lobbying for stricter enforcement policies that ensure a steady flow of detainees.

Detention and transportation

The physical process of deportation involves a vast infrastructure of detention and transportation. Early in the 20th century, immigration authorities used "floating detention facilities", holding migrants on the ships that brought them to the United States while their cases were being decided. This was supplemented by the construction of large, federally-run immigration stations like Angel Island and Ellis Island, which served as both processing centers and detention facilities. In the interior, the INS has historically relied on a network of federal facilities, local jails, and, increasingly, privately-owned prisons to detain individuals awaiting expulsion.

The transportation of deportees has been a massive logistical operation. In the early 20th century, officials used a network of cross-country "deportation trains" to move non-citizens from the interior to coastal ports. For expulsions to Mexico, the government has used buses, trains, and, beginning in the 1940s, airplanes. The most infamous of these transportation methods was the boatlift of the 1950s, which transported hundreds of thousands of Mexicans from Texas to Veracruz on repurposed cargo ships. This practice treated human beings as "cargo", prioritizing profit and punishment over their safety and well-being. In the contemporary era, the government uses a combination of chartered planes and commercial flights to carry out removals, a system that has been described as a "page from a commercial carrier's in-flight magazine" due to its extensive network of domestic and international routes.

Technology and surveillance

Technology has been integral to the expansion and standardization of the deportation machine. Early in its history, the Bureau of Immigration adopted photography and fingerprinting to identify and track non-citizens. During raids, agents have used surveillance photographs and hand-drawn maps to plan and execute their operations.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the development of vast digital databases has revolutionized immigration enforcement. The creation of shared, biometric databases allows for the near-instantaneous identification of non-citizens who have had any prior contact with immigration or law enforcement authorities. This technological integration, a key component of programs like Secure Communities, has effectively blurred the lines between criminal and immigration enforcement, turning routine police encounters into potential gateways to deportation.

Social effects

Deportation has wide-ranging and profound effects on individuals, families, and communities, both in the United States and in the countries to which people are sent.

On individuals

The deportation experience often begins with a period in immigration detention, which many deportees describe as demeaning, stressful, and dangerous. Unlike in the criminal justice system, where detention is a prelude to a trial, immigration detention is often indefinite, with no clear end date. Detainees are not serving time for a crime but are held to ensure their eventual expulsion. Conditions in these facilities, which include a mix of federal centers, county jails, and privately owned prisons, are often worse than in prisons. Detainees report inadequate food, a lack of recreation, and overcrowding. Immigration activists and detainees refer to some detention centers as "iceboxes" due to the constant, freezing temperatures, which they say are used to pressure detainees into agreeing to deportation. The uncertainty of their situation and the harsh conditions of confinement create extreme stress and lead many to abandon their legal appeals.

Upon release and return to their country of origin, many deportees experience a profound sense of loss and dislocation. This is particularly true for those who grew up in the United States and have few or no connections to their country of birth. They often describe themselves as feeling like foreigners in their own homeland, struggling with cultural differences, language barriers, and a lack of social networks. The inability to provide for their families from afar creates a "gendered shame", particularly for men who feel they have failed in their role as breadwinners.

On families

Deportation inflicts immense hardship on families, primarily through forced separation. The decision for a parent to migrate without their children is often a "gamble" intended as a temporary sacrifice to provide a better future. However, prolonged separations have become increasingly common, with parents and children often living apart for many years. This creates a "temporal coordination" problem, where parents' lives in the U.S. move at a different pace than their children's lives in Mexico, leading to a disconnect in their experiences and expectations.

The consequences for children are severe. They often experience feelings of abandonment, resentment, and emotional distress, which can lead to behavioral problems and poor school performance. The birth of U.S.-born siblings can exacerbate these feelings, as children in the home country fear they will compete for their parents' love and scarce resources. The deportation of parents who are the sole caregivers for U.S. citizen children has a particularly devastating impact. In 2011 alone, the U.S. deported an estimated 100,000 parents of U.S. citizen children, a tenfold increase from the previous decade.

The process of "doing gender" is heavily strained by deportation. Migrant mothers bear a greater "moral burden" for family separation than fathers, as they are judged more harshly for not fulfilling their role as primary caregivers. Fathers, in contrast, often see their role primarily as economic providers, and their relationship with their children can become transactional, based on the sending of remittances.

On communities

In the United States, deportation policies create a "climate of social control" in immigrant communities. The fear of apprehension and deportation, fueled by immigration raids on homes and workplaces, makes migrants more vulnerable and less likely to report crimes or labor abuses. This dynamic helps create and maintain a compliant, low-wage labor force, as undocumented workers are less likely to organize or demand better working conditions for fear of being deported. The merging of criminal and immigration law enforcement, through programs like Secure Communities, means that any encounter with police, even for a minor traffic violation, can lead to deportation. This fosters a deep distrust of law enforcement and encourages immigrants to live "under the radar".

In the countries to which people are deported, the effects are also significant and varied. In nations like Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, deportees are often scapegoated for rising crime rates and social problems. This stigma, often fueled by sensationalist media reports, makes it difficult for deportees to find work and reintegrate into society. In the Dominican Republic, the government "criminalizes" deportees upon arrival, booking them as criminals and requiring them to report to police as if on parole.

Conversely, in some contexts, deportees have become a valuable labor source for transnational corporations. In Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, bilingual and bicultural deportees are actively recruited to work in call centers, where they answer calls from U.S. customers for a fraction of the wages they would earn in the United States. Deportation can also exacerbate existing social problems in receiving countries. The deportation of individuals with criminal records has been linked to the growth of gang violence in Central America, as deportees bring with them the skills and networks of U.S.-based gangs.

Economic effects

Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would have substantial negative effects on the U.S. economy, reducing the national gross domestic product (GDP), decreasing federal tax revenues, and imposing significant social costs on families and communities. Studies project that such a policy would reduce the U.S. labor force by nearly 5 percent, triggering a cascade of economic consequences.

GDP and federal budget

A 2016 study by the Center for American Progress projected that removing the estimated 7 million unauthorized workers from the U.S. economy would result in an immediate 1.4 percent reduction in GDP, rising to a 2.6 percent reduction over 10 years as capital stock adjusts downward. The cumulative loss to GDP over a decade was estimated at $4.7 trillion. A 2017 report by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) reached a similar conclusion, estimating a cumulative GDP loss of $4.7 trillion over 10 years.

The removal of unauthorized workers would also significantly reduce federal tax revenues, as income and payroll taxes are the primary source of federal tax financing. The Center for American Progress estimated a loss of nearly $900 billion in federal revenue over 10 years, which would raise the federal debt by an estimated $982 billion and increase the debt-to-GDP ratio by 6 percentage points.

Industry and state-level

The economic impact would be felt across all sectors, but some industries would be disproportionately affected. Industries with the highest concentration of unauthorized workers, such as agriculture, construction, and leisure and hospitality, would experience workforce reductions of 10 percent to 18 percent. The agriculture and leisure and hospitality sectors would see their respective GDPs fall by 8.6 percent in the long run. While these industries would see the largest percentage declines, the largest absolute GDP losses would occur in the nation's largest industries: manufacturing ($74 billion annual loss), wholesale and retail trade ($65 billion annual loss), and financial activities ($54 billion annual loss).

At the state level, the impacts would be most severe in states with large unauthorized populations. A mass deportation policy was projected to reduce California's annual GDP by $103 billion, or about 5 percent. Texas would lose $60 billion, New York $40 billion, and New Jersey $26 billion annually.

Households and housing market

Beyond the national GDP, mass deportation would have a devastating effect on the finances of mixed-status households, those containing both U.S. citizens and undocumented residents. In 2014, there were 3.3 million such households in the United States, home to 6.6 million U.S.-born citizens, 5.7 million of whom were children. A 2017 study found that removing undocumented members from these households would slash their median income by 47 percent, from $41,300 to $22,000, plunging millions of U.S. families into poverty. The study estimated that the cost of raising the one-third of these children who would likely remain in the U.S. would total $118 billion.

The nation's housing market would also be jeopardized, as households with undocumented immigrants held 1.2 million mortgages in 2014. Research has found that deportations "exacerbate rates of foreclosure among Latinos by removing income earners from owner-occupied households", with local immigration enforcement playing a significant role in this trend.

Criticism

The deportation system has faced extensive criticism from legal scholars, historians, and sociologists, who have analyzed its constitutional foundations, social consequences, and role in the global economy. Critics have challenged the legal doctrines that underpin the government's authority, the racial and social inequities the system produces, and the punitive nature of its application.

Legal and constitutional

A central line of legal criticism targets the plenary power doctrine, which grants the federal government near-absolute authority over immigration matters. Legal scholar Daniel Kanstroom describes this doctrine as a legal anomaly that has "impeded the development of coherent substantive principles of constitutional deportation law". While the Supreme Court's decision in '' Fong Yue Ting v. United States'' (1893) established that deportation is not a punishment for a crime but a civil, administrative procedure, critics have long argued that this distinction is a legal fiction that strips non-citizens of fundamental constitutional rights. In 1926, Judge Learned Hand described deportation as "exile, a dreadful punishment, abandoned by the common consent of all civilized peoples". Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, dissenting in '' Harisiades v. Shaughnessy'' (1952), wrote, "Banishment is punishment in the practical sense. It may deprive a man and his family of all that makes life worth while".

This "civil-criminal" distinction has allowed for a deportation system that operates largely outside of the established norms of Anglo-American jurisprudence. Critics point to a lack of due process, citing the government's history of conducting raids without warrants, denying bail, and limiting access to counsel, as exemplified by the Palmer Raids. The use of retroactive laws—which punish individuals for actions that were not deportable offenses when they were committed—is another major point of contention. While the Supreme Court has ruled that such laws must be unambiguously clear, it has not found them to be inherently unconstitutional, a stance critics argue is inconsistent with the principles underlying the ''ex post facto'' clause and substantive due process.

Racial and social

A significant body of scholarship critiques deportation as a system of racialized social control. Historian Mae Ngai argues that the rise of immigration restriction in the 1920s "produced the illegal alien as a new legal and political subject, whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and a legal impossibility—a subject barred from citizenship and without rights". This category, she contends, was racially constructed from its inception, disproportionately affecting Mexicans and Asians while administrative discretion "unmade" the illegality of European immigrants. This process created "alien citizens"—U.S.-born individuals, primarily of Asian and Mexican descent, who are "presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state".

Other critics have connected deportation to a broader history of forced removal targeting non-white groups. Sociologist Tanya Golash-Boza compares mass deportation to Jim Crow laws, the internment of Japanese Americans, and Indian boarding schools, all of which involved the "devaluing of the family ties of nonwhite families". Kanstroom similarly traces the "conceptual matrices" of deportation to the removal of the Cherokee, freed slaves, and radical labor organizers.

Modern deportation practices are seen as perpetuating this legacy. The targeting of Latino and Caribbean men, who comprise over 90 percent of deportees, is viewed as a form of "gendered racial removal". The focus on "criminal aliens" is seen as a way to legitimize the expulsion of a racialized class, even when their offenses are minor. Critics argue that the system creates a "climate of social control" in immigrant communities, fostering fear and making individuals vulnerable to exploitation.

Economic and political

Sociological critiques often frame mass deportation as an integral component of the neoliberal phase of global capitalism. Tanya Golash-Boza argues that deportation is part of a "neoliberal cycle" that requires a disposable labor force. In this view, the United States facilitates migration from developing countries to fill low-wage jobs and then uses the threat and practice of deportation to keep this labor force compliant and to remove "surplus labor" during economic downturns.

This system, critics contend, contributes to a form of "global apartheid" where the free movement of capital is prioritized over the free movement of labor. Affluent citizens of the Global North can travel and live where they please, while poor, non-white people from the Global South are trapped in their countries of origin or rendered vulnerable as a "racialized and gendered" workforce if they migrate.

Deportation is also criticized as a political tool used to deflect from domestic problems and to rally support through scapegoating. Kanstroom argues that in times of fear, "the government tends to rely on administrative processes instead of the formal criminal system and to target individuals for action often on the basis of questionable predictions about what they might do". The use of deportation during the " War on Terror" and the " War on Drugs" is seen as an example of this dynamic, where the expulsion of non-citizens is presented as a solution to complex social problems like crime and national security, despite a lack of evidence that such policies are effective.

See also

* List of people deported or removed from the United States
* Deportation in the second presidency of Donald Trump

References

Works cited

*
*

*

*

*
*
*

{{Authority control