Nearly 205K Deportations of Parents of US Citizens in Just Over Two Years Seth Freed Wessler - Colorlines.com
go to original December 18, 2012

ICE agents escort man after an arrest in Detroit. (ICE)

The federal government conducted more than 200,000 deportations of parents who said their children are U.S. citizens in a timespan of just over two years, according to new data obtained by Colorlines.com. The figures represent the longest view to date of the scale of parental deportation.

Between July 1, 2010, and Sept. 31, 2012, nearly 23 percent of all deportations - or, 204,810 deportations - were issued for parents with citizen children, according to federal data unearthed through a Freedom of Information Act request. [See the full data set here.]

Because some people may have been deported more than once in the time period, the data represents total deportations conducted, not the number of individuals removed from the country. However, experts say that the total number of deportations of parents may be higher because some mothers and fathers fear telling authorities that they have kids. An additional group of parents whose kids are not U.S. citizens are not reflected in the numbers.

As Congress and the White House promise immigration reform legislation in the new year, the numbers raise questions about the impact of the government’s immigration policies on families and about what happens to the children whose mothers and fathers are deported from the United States.

“We are in a crisis situation in which we need to start taking action immediately to prevent these needless and often-times permanent separations of American children from their families,” California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard said in an interview with Colorlines.com. Roybal-Allard, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, introduced legislation last year that would protect detained and deported immigrant parents from losing their children.

“We have to make sure that all children are protected,” Roybal-Allard said. “We’re talking about U.S. citizens; their pleas and cries for help are pretty much being ignored at this point.”

Congress in 2009 ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to compile data on parental deportation beginning on July 1, 2010, and to release it every six months. Since then, however, the federal government has released the figures just once, and only for the first six months of 2011.

The new data includes all deported mothers and fathers who reported having U.S.-citizen kids since July 1, 2010, including those in the previously reported six-month period. Rates of parental deportation have remained more or less level since the government began collecting the data, and annually, more than 90,000 parents with U.S.-citizen kids are removed from the United States.

Families Torn Apart

Questions remain about what happens to the children of deportees.

“We don’t know how many [children] stay here and how many go with their parents,” said Luis H. Zayas, the dean of the University of Texas School of Social Work who is at work on a federally funded study on the mental health impacts on children when mothers and fathers are deported.

“We know there are traumatic effects on the kids,” Zayas added. “We are talking about separating families from children. That’s not something our government should be doing.”

Zayas said that when children follow their parents to Mexico, the country where most deportees are from, they often struggle with stigma and deep poverty. “Many of their parents fled poverty, fled government oppression and when they return, they return to these origins. That puts kids at risk.”

Read more at Colorlines.com

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