deportation

A just-released report from the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona sheds new light on the effects of the U.S. government's migrant "removal" efforts and the growing ties of deportees to the United States.

The government of Canada has made it increasingly difficult for Mexican asylum seekers to find sanctuary there. This has resulted in an increase in deportees, many of whom face highly dangerous conditions upon their forced return to their country of birth. In response, migrants and activists in Montreal have organized to challenge Canadian policy, creating new webs of solidarity across international boundaries.

The widespread approval of the Obama administration's recently announced immigration policy initiative—and the profound joy felt by large numbers of unauthorized migrants and their allies and advocates in the United States—is understandable in many ways. But the happiness should not cloud our collective ability to see the serious limits to Obama’s policy change nor, more importantly, dilute energies pushing for more far-ranging transformation of a fundamentally unjust system.

In the United States, at least 5000 children are abandoned and left in state foster care, or in the care of extended family, when birth parents are arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many parents are deported with their children having little hope of ever reuniting with them again. On this day, we’ve been cleared to visit with a couple of mothers from Mexico.