Breaking Down The U.S. Deportation Machine - Latino USA

The United States runs on migrant labor. This has been the case for most of this country’s history, and demand for cheap workers over the past two centuries has led to waves of immigration from China, Japan, Europe, and Latin America, especially Mexico.

But as immigration numbers grew, so did efforts to deport these same migrants out of the country. Adam Goodman, a professor of Latin American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, calls this the deportation machine: an elaborate system of policymaking and public opinion that led to the expulsion of tens of millions of people from the U.S. since the late 19th century.

Goodman lays out this history in his recent book, The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants. While it has been enabled and enforced by Republicans and Democrats alike, the machine has not been limited to any specific administration. Unofficial means of pushing people out of the country, including persistent fear campaigns, social exclusion, and threats of violence and incarceration, existed for decades before the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and before the concept of an “undocumented immigrant” was codified through a series of federal policies.