Anglonautes > English words - vocabulary - dictionary - encyclopedia > Illegal Immigration > Detention, Deportation

LAST May, President Obama told an audience in El Paso that deportation of immigrants would focus on “violent offenders and people convicted of crimes; not families, not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income.”

Two weeks ago, however, the Department of Homeland Security released a report that flatly belies the new policy. From January to June 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 46,486 undocumented parents who claimed to have at least one child who is an American citizen.

In contrast, in the entire decade between 1998 and 2007, about 100,000 such parents were removed. The extraordinary acceleration in the dismantling of these families, part of the government’s efforts to meet an annual quota of about 400,000 deportations, has had devastating results.

Research by the Urban Institute and others reveals the deep and irreversible harm that parental deportation causes in the lives of their children. Having a parent ripped away permanently, without warning, is one of the most devastating and traumatic experiences in human development.

These children experience immediate household crises, starting with the loss of parental income. The harsh new economic reality causes housing and food insecurity. In response to psychological and economic disruptions, children show increased anxiety, frequent crying, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, withdrawal and anger.

In the long run, the children of deportation face increased odds of lasting economic turmoil, psychic scarring, reduced school attainment, greater difficulty in maintaining relationships, social exclusion and lower earnings. The research also exposes major misconceptions about these parents.

First, statistics about those who were deported in 2011 show that 45 percent were not apprehended for any criminal offense. Those who were, were usually arrested for relatively minor offenses, not violent crimes.

Second, most American-born children of undocumented parents are not “anchor babies”; most of the parents have lived and worked in the United States for years before having their first child. “Birth tourism” is a xenophobic myth.

Finally, our studies in New York City and elsewhere show that these parents are extremely dedicated to their children’s well-being and development. Undocumented parents typically work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, at the lowest of wages. Deporting them worsens the already precarious lot of their children.

A more humane deportation policy would not, as Mr. Obama pledged last May, target those with strong family ties who posed no public safety threat. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in fact, began implementing such a “prosecutorial discretion” policy last fall, aimed at considering family ties and other factors in deportation decisions and closing low-priority cases.

But preliminary data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raise the question of how committed the agency is to identifying and closing those cases. As John Morton, the agency’s director, testified in March, of 150,000 deportation cases the agency has reviewed nationwide, about 1,500 — a mere 1 percent — have been closed.

What does that mean for affected families? Consider Sara Martinez, 47, whose daughter is an American citizen. Since arriving from Ecuador, Ms. Martinez has paid her taxes, learned English and never broken a law, according to the New York Immigration Coalition, which has taken up her case. In January 2011, she was on a bus in Rochester with her daughter when three border patrol agents asked her for identification. She could produce only her Ecuadorean passport, and was arrested.

She has applied to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for prosecutorial discretion three times and been denied, without explanation, even though she meets new criteria for such discretion: she has close ties to the community and is not a threat to public safety.

Ms. Martinez’s six-year-old daughter has suffered from nightmares, had trouble sleeping and eating and expressed fear that the “police” will come again and take away her mother (who is not in detention while the case is pending) for good.

The United States should not be in the business of causing untold hardship by separating children from the love and care of their hard-working parents.

Hirokazu Yoshikawa, the academic dean

at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,

is the author of “Immigrants Raising Citizens:

Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children.”

Carola Suárez-Orozco,

co-director of immigration studies

at New York University, is an author of “Crossroads:

The Psychology of Immigration in the New Century.”

Deporting Parents Hurts Kids,
NYT,
20.4.2012,
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/
opinion/deporting-parents-ruins-kids.html

Deportation Without Representation

December 24, 2011

The New York Times

In deciding who may stay and who must leave this country, the deportation process for immigrants tolerates unfairness at every turn. Current laws have denied basic due process protections to people held in immigration detention. And now, a new report in the Cardozo Law Review reveals a severe shortage of competent legal assistance for tens of thousands facing deportation. The study examines cases in New York, but New York is hardly unique in this failing.

The report surveyed judges in five immigration courts and found shoddy lawyering widespread. According to the judges’ responses, in nearly half the New York cases, immigrants who had lawyers received inadequate representation. In 14 percent of cases, they said the attorneys’ preparation and knowledge of the law and the facts were “grossly inadequate.”

Worse, a huge number of immigrants in New York have no representation at all. Although poor defendants in criminal courts are entitled to court-appointed lawyers, people in immigration courts are not. Over all, immigrants appeared in court without a lawyer in nearly 15,000 cases (27 percent of the total) between October 2005 and July 2010. About two-thirds of immigrants in detention were lawyerless. Other jurisdictions provided even less access to counsel: 79 percent of those arrested and transferred to immigration detention in other states lacked attorneys.

As in other areas, people with lawyers fared better. About 67 percent of those with lawyers during the period reviewed were allowed to stay, while only 8 percent of those without counsel avoided deportation.

These problems are but a subset of a much broader legal services crisis that is also forcing a soaring number of Americans to go to court without a lawyer in civil matters like home foreclosures, evictions and child support cases. Perversely, Congress has responded to the growing need for legal help by slashing the budget of the federal Legal Services Corporation. Government-financed legal assistance for people fighting deportation is nowhere on the radar.

Even so, some improvements are possible. The review of all deportation cases before the immigration courts announced last month by the Obama administration should be extended to cases in the federal appellate courts. Dismissing the many cases at that level that fall outside the administration’s focus on immigrants who have committed serious crimes or pose national security risks could free up competent lawyers for more serious cases. Private foundations and bar associations could also help improve representation by creating programs that put young lawyers to work full time on immigrant issues.

Deportation Without Representation,
NYT,
24.12.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/
opinion/sunday/deportation-without-representation.html

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