On Jan. 14, the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies department hosted a panel of immigration experts for an event titled “What is Mass Deportation?” The panelists discussed the potential implications of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration for U.S. immigration policy. Trump’s proposals call for the deportation of undocumented migrants, migrants with criminal records and people with Temporary Protected Status, according to The New York Times.
The event, which featured University of Illinois Chicago professor Adam Goodman, Brown University professor Ieva Jusionyte and University of California, Berkeley professor Cecilia Menjivar, was moderated by LALACS professor Matthew Garcia. According to Garcia, approximately 50 community members attended the event in Filene Auditorium, with an additional 30 live-streaming the panel on YouTube.
Garcia began by recounting immigration policy from Trump’s term in office. Among the legislation Garcia highlighted was Executive Order 13769, issued in January 2017, which suspended the entry of foreign nationals from seven countries with concerns of terrorism, according to White House archives. Garcia also touched on the Zero Tolerance policy, which “prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice, from April 2018. He also discussed Title 42, which was issued in March 2020 by the Center for Disease Control and denied migrants the “right to seek asylum,” citing concerns about the spread of COVID-19, according to the Associated Press.
Goodman, who received several awards for his book “The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants,” said the United States has a “long history of deportation.”
“The United States has deported 60 million people plus during the last 140 years,” Goodman said. “The historical context is really important for both situating and understanding some of the continuities as well as some of the crucial differences.”
Menjivar said immigration laws have “expanded” the “population of immigrants who have been criminalized and subject to be targeted, subject to detention and deportation.”
Jusionyte added that a 2024 study — which was funded by the National Institute of Justice and examined criminal records in Texas from 2012 to 2018 — found that undocumented immigrants were arrested less frequently for crimes compared to U.S.-born citizens. Specifically, undocumented immigrants are arrested at half the rate for drug-related and violent crime and at a quarter rate for property crimes, Jusionyte said.
She added that crime rates in neighboring countries such as Mexico are affected by U.S. influence.
“We can talk about kidnapping, forceful recruitment of youth to join organized crime groups and join what we call the cartels — those guns come from the United States,” Jusionyte said. “… Mexico has very strict gun laws. There are now only two gun stores in the whole country. U.S. border states bordering Mexico have 10,000 gun stores, and this doesn’t even include online sales.”
Garcia then asked the panelists about “how dependent” the United States is on “immigrant labor” and the implications of a potential “mass deportation” — a reference to Trump’s campaign trail promise to undertake “the largest deportation effort in American history,” according to The Times. Menjivar said “there’s no question” that immigrants “are needed.”
“Immigrants are the ones who have cleaned [Hurricane] Katrina, who have cleaned Florida, who will be cleaning Los Angeles,” she said.
Goodman added that the Republican Party’s immigration policy “has shifted and changed over time” to its present-day claim that undocumented immigrants steal American jobs.
“Big business has always had an interest in maintaining the free flow of labor … including the exploitative conditions and power that go along with that,” Goodman said.
The panelists discussed limitations of Temporary Protected Status, which provides a “temporary immigration status” to citizens of countries that are “experiencing problems that make it difficult or unsafe for their nationals to be deported there,” according to the American Immigration Council.
Menjivar explained that the legislation was signed in November 1990 when “Central Americans were coming to the United States to seek protection from political economic violence.” According to Menjivar, TPS is “limited” because it only grants foreign nationals “protection for 18 months at a time.” The legislation outlines that “people on TPS” cannot “seek permanent residence or citizenship,” Menjivar added.
Goodman said “constantly renew[ing]” TPS puts a “huge burden on hundreds of thousands of people” without providing a “permanent solution.”
During an audience Q&A segment after the panel, an audience member asked whether the United States could adopt immigration laws “focused on accountability and reparation rather than punishment or pity.” Menjivar said the government had made several previous attempts at reparation that did not result in new legislation.
“President Clinton actually visited Guatemala and offer[ed] … an apology or regret for what [the United States] had contributed to the violence in Guatemala … but it didn’t translate into any policies,” Menjivar said. “But that would be a good start — to recognize the historic role that the U.S. has played in creating conditions that people then flee from and create maybe new admission categories to recognize these historical sins that are still there.”
Another person asked how mass deportations would affect international or undocumented students worried about “deportation” or “some of the dehumanization” the panelists had mentioned.
“I don’t see how we can isolate just protecting the students without taking into account that they are a part of families and communities that will be affected,” Jusionyte responded.
Menjivar agreed, noting the importance of the education of rights.
“Educational institutions can educate the students about their rights, legal rights, because that information will be disseminated to families and communities,” Menjivar said.
Still, Menjivar remained skeptical of the feasibility of mass deportations. In an interview conducted with Menjivar after the event, she explained that the “estimated cost of $88 billion annually to fund such a huge endeavor” does not align with federal goals.
“Immigration courts are already backlogged tremendously, with approximately three million pending cases, and many people in the country are not just going to be picked up and taken to the border or taken to their countries,” Menjivar said. “And that conflicts with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, whose goal is to trim at least $2 trillion from the federal budget.”
In an email statement to The Dartmouth following the panel, Garcia noted future educational programs available for the community, which includes an April 1 discussion on “U.S.-Mexico relations and how the new President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, will manage demands from the Trump administration to use her nation as a bulwark against immigrants.”
“We have a few panels in development now and will consider additional programming as new policies emerge,” Garcia wrote. “[These programs will] revisit the status of Trump’s promise of mass deportation.”
