The Faces of Deportation
One year. Six families. Dozens of lives disrupted by the Trump administration’s punitive and unpredictable immigration policies
One year. Six families. Dozens of lives disrupted by Trump’s punitive, unpredictable policies.
TDonald Trump was carried into office on a frothing anti-immigrant platform, there were an estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Roughly two-thirds had been here for more than a decade. Prior administrations had abysmal records, but generally acknowledged that the U.S. was enriched by the immigrants who chose to build their lives here. It’s why Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to some 3 million undocumented immigrants, why George W. Bush supported a path to legal citizenship, why Barack Obama — labeled “deporter-in-chief ” after removing nearly 3 million people — also created DACA to protect immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
But from the start, Trump embraced a rabid xenophobia once restricted to the furthest fringe in modern American politics, slashing refugee admissions, rescinding DACA, and ratcheting up arrests of longtime residents. All of that was before the pandemic hit, shutting down immigration courts, turning detention centers into viral tinderboxes, and giving the administration cover to institute some of its most draconian measures yet.
A year ago, Rolling Stone began documenting the stories of immigrants around the country who are fighting removal, waylaid in detention centers, and mired in endless court proceedings, with the stability and safety of their families hanging in the balance. (Last names have been withheld out of concern over retaliation.) Beto, a 25-year-old DACA recipient, was deported back to a country he hadn’t seen since he was nine. Ignacio, a father of three, may be forced to leave his family and the town he’s lived in for more than three decades. But despite the administration’s best efforts to drive them away, these families share a determination to hang on to the lives they’ve made here. “What we want is the same as any Americans,” says Hormis, Ignacio’s wife. “We dream of buying a house, like anyone. We have a family, we have a dog. We’re hardworking people that love the country. That’s why we’re here.”