Between 2003 and 2013, an estimated 740,000 to 920,000 parents of children who are U.S. citizens were deported from the United States. In 2013, for example, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) reported that it deported 72,410 parents of American children. The pace of parental deportations was slower in 2016, when 28,860 parents were deported. The numbers for 2017 have not yet been reported, but many anticipate an increase given reports that ICE has targeted parents for arrest who are picking up their children at school or attending hearings in children’s courts.
As the country debates the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals(DACA) program, which has extended temporary protection to 800,000 undocumented youth who came to the U.S. as children, it is important to keep in mind that there are far more than 800,000 children and youth who are vulnerable to deportation — or to de facto deportation — under current immigration laws.
The term de facto deportation refers to people who are not technically deported, but who face no choice but to leave the country if they want to continue to live with a family member who has been deported. There are a lot of people in this boat. A 2009 Human Rights Watch report estimated that at least one million spouses or children experienced the deportation of a family member between 1997 and 2007. According to Mexico’s most recent census, more than half a million U.S. citizen children were living in Mexico in 2010.
[For more on this story by Beth Caldwell, go to http://youthtoday.org/2017/11/...children-stay-or-go/]
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