#ReuniteUS: Facilitating Return To U.S. After Deportation
Deportation–permanent banishment from one’s home, life, family, ability to earn a living, and safety–is an extreme consequence for a civil immigration infraction. The Trump Administration weaponized deportation policy, deliberately destroying the lives of U.S. citizens and immigrants. But unjust deportations occurred under previous administrations as well.
Allowing individuals who were deported to return to the United States is part of the healing process they, their families, and our nation need after the trauma of the Trump years. Return after deportation is also part of the broader racial reckoning required to build systems that support and value all people.
This memo includes policy proposals, support for return after deportation, and recent media coverage.
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Policy
Summary: Administrative Policy Changes to #ReuniteUS
A short overview of administrative policy changes to facilitate return after deportation, without an act of Congress.
Support for #ReuniteUS
232 National, State, and Local Organizations
Led by the Immigration Hub and America’s Voice, more than 230 organizations endorsed a 2021 Immigration Action Planfor the new administration that includes: “a parole process for individuals who have been harmed by the family separation policy, visa backlogs, deportation and other hardships,” as well as a “program to allow individuals deported or excluded from the U.S. on illegal or discriminatory procedural or substantive grounds, or due to errors of fact or law, to return to process their applications and explore other forms of redress.”
90 National, State, and Local Civil and Human Rights, Labor, and Immigrant and Racial Justice Organizations
Writing to President Biden, the organizations call for “a ‘chance to come home’ program honoring the principles of family unity and second chances by allowing people enduring family separation and other hardship due to unfair deportations to apply to return to their home and loved ones in the United States.”
Roadmap to Freedom
Reps. Jayapal, Garcia, Escobar, Ocasio Cortez, Chu, and Clarke, along with FIRM Action (a grassroots immigrant rights network) crafted a “Roadmap to Freedom” resolution to introduce in the 117th Congress. The resolution calls for “creating a just and accessible process for eligible individuals who are deported, detained, or in sanctuary to reunite with their families and communities, and return home in the United States,” among other priorities.
Members of Congress have also demonstrated support for return after deportation for various constituencies, through introduction of the Protect Patriot Spouses Act; Adoptee Citizenship Act; Veteran Deportation Prevention and Reform Act; and other bills.
Children Thrive Action Network + 180 Organizations
A letter about transition priorities, signed by over 180 organizations working to defend and support children in immigrant families, includes rewriting “existing return policies to ensure a right to return to the United States for immigrants who have been deported from their families and communities.”
Interfaith Immigration Coalition
The Interfaith Immigration Coalition’s recommendations for the Biden-Harris Administration include allowing “individuals to return to the U.S. after deportation when it is in the interest of the public good and family unity.”
American Immigration Lawyers Association
In its recommendations for the future of immigration, AILA calls for “robust policies on humanitarian parole,” one of the mechanisms that can be used to allow an individual to return to the United States after a deportation.
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
In its “Blueprint for the Next Administration,” ILRC calls for deportations to “be reviewed and individuals unjustly deported [to] be afforded opportunities to return to the US. These are important steps forward to undo the harm done by the Trump administration’s racist and xenophobic policies.”
Ohio Immigrant Alliance
In a post-election statement, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance explains that facilitating return after deportation must be part of the recovery process after four years of Trump anti-immigration cruelty. “Allowing aspiring Americans who were deported to return to the U.S. is part of the healing we need as a nation. Let’s welcome them home.”
Constituents
After the election, over 500 Americans signed a petition to the Biden-Harris administration in support of the: “U.S. veterans, DACA beneficiaries, spouses and parents of U.S. citizens, long-term U.S. residents, business owners, and refugees [who] have all been deported in recent years, cruelly separated from their homes and loved ones because of politics.” They are calling for return after deportation policies “to help heal this nation.”
Ahead of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, hundreds of Americans also signed a petition “calling on the Democratic Party to include return after deportation in the 2020 national platform.” They wrote: “This applies to people with families and single individuals: everyone who considers the United States their home.”
Currently, nearly 600 people signed a petition to President Biden that states: “Deportation is an extreme consequence for a civil immigration violation. The Trump administration wasn’t the first to deport people with cruelty, but it certainly spread the pain. This problem must be fixed by the Biden administration. We are calling for both administrative policy changes and legislative reform to bring our friends and loved ones home.”
Media Coverage
Mory Keita, a witness in a civil rights lawsuit against Butler County corrections officers, was deported before he could testify in the case, despite a judge’s order. (Cincinnati Enquirer, December 2020).
Deported with his hip detached from his body, leaving a family with young children behind, Goura Ndiaye recounts the desperation he lives with every day after deportation. (Mother Jones, October 2020).
Issa Sao, deported to Mauritania in 2018, continues to fight to return to his family. (Spectrum 1 News, October 2020).
Claudio Rojas was deported in 2019, after appearing in a major national film critical of ICE. (Courthouse News Service, September 2020).
Ibrahima Keita was deported to Mali, leaving behind a son with sickle cell who could not be treated in Mali and a family that is housing insecure. (Reuters, September 2020).
Estela Juarez, whose mother Alejandra was deported by the Trump administration, addressed the Democratic National Convention in prime time: “We are American families. We need a president who will bring people together, not tear them apart.” (The Ledger, August 2020).
Maria Paz Perez agrees with then-candidate Biden’s statement that families belong together, and calls for the return of her husband, Brigido Acosta Luis, deported in 2013. (Daily Kos, August 2020).
In “The True Costs of Deportation,” Julia Preston reported on families who are dealing with separation–and even murder–of a loved one after deportation. (The Marshall Project, June 2020).
Archbishop of Philadelphia Nelson Perez, former Bishop of Cleveland, promised Pedro Ramirez he would come to Pedro’s Ohio home for dinner when Pedro returns to the United States one day. (The Chronicle, January 2020).
In a New York Times op-ed, author and journalist Jean Guerrero wrote:
If Mr. Biden is serious about “securing our values as a nation of immigrants,” he can’t just reverse President Donald Trump’s decisions, or label deportations under President Barack Obama a “big mistake.” He must repair the harm that was done when he was vice president, which left communities fractured and financially devastated, as the public health researcher William D. Lopez observed in his book, “Separated.” He should extend some of the same relief sought for victims of Mr. Trump’s policy of family separation — such as mental health servicesand reunification — to those torn apart by Mr. Obama’s policies.
