Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Why Trump's mass deportation plan is a lost cause

Migrants being detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents

U.S. Border Patrol officers detain migrants camping in the border area of Jacumba, Calif., in June.

Katie McTiernan/Anadolu via Getty Images

Garcia is an assistant professor of sociology at Yale University, specializing in international migration from Latin America. He is a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.

Immigration, especially that of undocumented migrants, is a key issue — perhaps the key issue — in the presidential race.

Despite the Biden administration's efforts to strengthen border security, the Trump campaign has taken a more extreme stance. Former President Donald Trump has spent months on the campaign trail pushing for mass deportations, proposing to deport an unprecedented 22 million people. This would severely impact migrant communities and the U.S. economy. Rhetoric aside, however, such an effort is condemned to fail from the start because of — ironically — one deeply rooted American value: family.


I am a researcher who has spent the last decade studying the movement of migrants through Mexico toward the United States. In this time, I have had the opportunity to meet hundreds of Central Americans moving northward toward the U.S. Some of the migrants I met had already lived in the U.S., been deported or chosen to leave, and were headed back again (sometimes for the second, third and fourth times).

These migrants had suffered countless terrible experiences. They’d spent time lost in the Arizona desert, nearly drowned in the Rio Grande, been kidnapped by drug cartels in Mexico, suffered hunger, faced deadly violence and walked thousands of miles. Despite all these dangers lying between them and the United States, they were headed back again (and again) for one primary reason: to get back to the families they had left behind.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

For example, in 2015, I interviewed a man from El Salvador. At that time, he had been out of the United States for nearly a year, and had been deported three times from Mexico and once from the U.S. border when trying to enter California. When I asked him why he kept trying to get to the U.S., he explained: “I have a wife and three young daughters waiting for me in the United States.” He had lived in the U.S. for years, but after being stopped for speeding, he was deported to El Salvador. Ever since, he had been attempting to return.

When I asked if he feared the increased border policing, he said, "I'm not afraid. My life is there. I'm like Speedy Gonzales — small, fast and always escaping. No matter how much they try, I'll get away because my family is there." For the many migrants like him, there is no other option but to keep trying.

This strength and resilience of families — their desire to be together, to live their lives —are sufficient to thwart Trump's plans to deport 22 million undocumented migrants because, simply put, deported migrants will find a way to make it back. Of course, a combination of massive deportations at the border and from the interior of the United States would wreak havoc on family structures, the economy, and the nation’s social fabric. Still, families and communities would organize, move resources and mobilize to bring back the people they love, just as they always have.

Yes, for many Americans, immigration is a top concern in this election cycle. And deportation is the easy answer that, on the surface, looks like the obvious solution. But if we want order and control at the border, attacking families simply won’t work. The idea of mass deportation is not new — America has tried it since passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, and studies show it has never worked.

Instead, we must push politicians for more creative solutions that take into account and learn from our previous mistakes. Instead of thinking immigration as an issue of deportation, we have to think about it through the axis of inclusion, and recognition.

While calls for mass deportation are sure to fail, a more balanced approach to dealing with undocumented immigration would offer new pathways to legalization for undocumented immigrants (such as the parents of U.S. citizens) and open additional pathways for circular migration, where migrants could benefit from working in the U.S. for a period without having to permanently relocate to the United States. Such a solution might work.

What will not work is the mass deportation of parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, neighbors and community members, who are destined to return to the U.S. through pure resilience (and to suffer greatly in doing so). And while Trump’s policies have constantly sought to dehumanize immigrants, in fact, his proposed deportation will fail because family ties and the desire to be with loved ones, despite dangers, are aspects of humanity at its best.

Read More

US Capitol

Each branch of government needs to get serious about restoring the public's trust.

Andrey Denisyuk/Getty Images

We need a government that works

Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.

The first — and really only — order of business for the government is to solve problems beyond the grasp of a single person or a small community. In exchange for that service, we the people surrender some of our income and liberty. This grand bargain breaks down when the government decides it’s got other things to do besides take care of everything from our sewage to our space debris.

The longer the government falls short of our expectations, the more likely the people will be to opt out of their own obligations, such as voting. This dangerous tit-for-tat is hard to reverse. A less effective government sparks a less dutiful public, which makes it harder for the government to perform, and so on.

Keep ReadingShow less
People wading in a river, in front of a destroyed house

Workers walk through the Rocky Broad River in Chimney Rock, N.C., near a home destoryed by Hurricane Helene.

Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Project 2025 would have 'catastrophic' impact on hurricane warnings

Raj Ghanekar is a student at Northwestern University and a reporter for the school’s Medill News Service.

Residents in the southeastern United States are still recovering from devastating damage brought on by back-to-back hurricanes. As federal, state and local officials continue working to deliver aid, experts say the country would be less prepared for future hurricanes if proposals included the conservative plan known as Project 2025 were to be put in place.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration houses the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, which are vital to predicting these cyclones. But the 920-page proposal published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argues NOAA “should be dismantled” and includes steps to undermine its authority and position leading the country’s planning for severe weather events, such as providing official emergency warnings.

Keep ReadingShow less
Destroyed mobile home

A mobile home destroyed by a tornado associated with Hurricane Milton is seen on Oct.12 in the Lakewood Park community of Fort Pierce, Fla.

Paul Hennesy/Anadolu via Getty Images

Disaster fatigue is a real thing. We need a cure.

Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.

Before I left for the airport to attend a conference in Washington, D.C., I double checked with my wife that she was OK with me leaving while a hurricane was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. We had been in Miami for a little more than a year at that point, and it doesn’t take long to become acutely attentive to storms when you live in Florida. Storms nowadays form faster, hit harder and stay longer.

Ignorance of the weather is not an option. It’s tiring.

Keep ReadingShow less
Latino man sitting outside a motel room

One arm of the government defines homelessness narrowly, focusing on those living in shelters or on the streets. But another deparmtent also counts people living in doubled-up housing or motels as homeless.

Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

How conflicting definitions of homelessness fail Latino families

Arzuaga is the housing policy analyst for the Latino Policy Forum.

The majority of Latinos in the United States experiencing homelessness are invisible. They aren’t living in shelters or on the streets but are instead “doubled up” — staying temporarily with friends or family due to economic hardship. This form of homelessness is the most common, yet it remains undercounted and, therefore, under-addressed, partly due to conflicting federal definitions of homelessness.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development defines homelessness narrowly, focusing on those living in shelters or places not meant for habitation, such as the streets. This definition, while useful for some purposes, excludes many families and children who are technically homeless because they live in uncertain and sometimes dangerous housing situations but are not living on the streets. This narrow definition means that many of these “doubled up” families don’t qualify for the resources and critical housing support that HUD provides, leaving them to fend for themselves in precarious living situations.

Keep ReadingShow less