Abstract
The mass use of deportation to “strengthen the borders” is lauded by politicians and conservative leaning segments of the population, while condemned by immigrant activists and left-leaning social groups. As immigration judges Denise Slavin and Dana Marks note in the third chapter of The New Deportation Delirium: Interdisciplinary Responses, the complexity of immigration law is “second only to tax law” (p. 90), resulting in a pervasive ignorance among the public on both sides of the issue. The intersection of academic literature and practical experience is an underutilized partnership that may have profound positive impacts on vulnerable populations, their communities, and the policies that shape their experiences. The New Deportation Delirium: Interdisciplinary Responses, edited by Daniel Kanstroom and M. Brinton Lykes, provides a timely and unique collection of scholars and practitioners merging their perspectives to highlight the vulnerability of the immigrant population and the impact of detention and deportation on immigrants, their families, and their communities in the United States and countries of origin.
The New Deportation Delirium effectively merges two worlds that thrive together but often operate independently: academia and practice. The authors of each chapter are members of the respective fields they discuss, adding intimate insight into the challenges practitioners face in implementing “best practices,” and their recommendations for a more efficient, less harmful system. The authors, both independently and collectively across chapters, address the legal and structural constraints imposed by current policies while imbedding a humanitarian tone to the effects on the immigrant population. The effects of these policies are far-reaching and layered, impacting not only the immigrants facing deportation but also their mixed status families, communities both in the United States and in the country of origin, and the advocates or officials who interact with the immigrant community.
Luis Argueta’s forward traces his “immigration education” beginning with his documentation of the 2008 Postville Raid and interviewing “families left behind” in Guatemala to “understand the implications of the raid in Postville and other U.S. policies and practices for [migrants’] families and communities on both sides of the border” (p. xvi). The introduction follows with an overview of the definition and goals of deportation, the historical shift in policies and rights for immigrants, and the systemic impacts on deportees and their families.
The first four chapters highlight the challenges of comprehensive immigration reform. The editors best summarize Thronson’s chapter which “examines the profound tensions between the aspirations and real practices of immigration and family law, noting in particular how the best interests of the child fare remarkably poorly in the immigration system” (p. 19). It highlights the harm done to immigrant and citizen children alike, who are indirectly punished for their parents’ immigration status. The second chapter by Dr. Schiro describes the size and scope of the immigration detention system, the legal distinctions between criminal inmates and civilly confined deportees, and the challenges of developing “best practices” at the intersection between increasing need and limited resources while addressing bureaucratic pushback and failures to comply with established standards. In Chapter 3, Slavin and Marks focus on the roles, responsibilities, and challenges facing immigration judges who the Department of Justice (DoJ) deems as government attorneys rather than judges. They explore the complexities of immigration law, the structural obstacles that affect impartiality, and the challenges to having immigration courts housed within the enforcement focused DoJ. In Chapter 4, Noorani, Nystrom, and Belanger address the current state of U.S. immigration law and policy, the harm done to immigrant communities, and the challenges to immigration reform including politics, the continual merging of criminal justice and immigration enforcement, and conflict between court systems.
The second half of The New Deportation Delirium focuses on professionals who aid migrants, the “deep tensions within and across” disciplines, and the transnational dimensions of working with migrants. Chico and Congress discuss the lenses through which social workers and lawyers interact with immigrant clients and highlight the potential for greater collaboration between the disciplines to produce higher quality of services. Chapter 6 by Brabeck, Porterfield, and Loughry provides a rich summary of psychosocial interventions and clinical assessments of migrants and their families. The unique characteristics of migrants’ families links the psychological effects of detainment and deportation to their experiences of violence in their country of origin and the deep-rooted fear prominent among this population. In Chapter 7, Lykes and her colleagues focus on the challenges of transnational and mixed status families on both sides of the border within a historical and transnational framework by utilizing participatory action research. The book concludes with the alienation and discrimination felt by deportees “returned” to El Salvador and the effect this influx has on receiving communities. The chapter and book closes with the deportees’ coping mechanisms and thoughts on potential improvements to the immigration system through pathways to citizenship and the need to facilitate deportees’ reintegration back into their countries of origin. Many deportees have no memory of their “homeland” due to childhood migration and lack the social support networks to satisfy basic housing and employment needs.
Criminology can draw heavily from The New Deportation Delirium and similar works. The authors’ combined perspectives place immigration and deportation into a larger transnational, sociological, and legal context, with intimate insight into each system’s complexity and relationship to criminological mechanisms. The vignettes utilized throughout the text increase the readability for young scholars who may be unfamiliar with the legalities of the immigration system. While slightly overused, the vignettes can aid readers to draw parallels between immigrant experiences to those of other marginalized groups with regard to over criminalization, repression of civil rights, over policing, over incarceration, and the effects of separation on families and communities. In conclusion, undergraduate upperclassman and graduate students in criminology, Latino/Latina studies, political science, and law, who have an interest in understanding the broader effects current policies have on the immigrant community may benefit from the intersectionality between disciplines and enhance their understanding the complexity of deportation within a larger transnational framework.