US: Never-Ending Deportations

So far in 2021, the United States has increased the deportation of Mexicans from 13,355 in January to 21,485 in May. The number of people thrown out of the country peaked in April at 22,201, higher than the numbers recorded before the pandemic. These figures correspond with the statistics prepared by the Migratory Policy Division of the Mexican Department of the Interior, according to which 84,826 Mexicans who were previously living in the United States were deported between January and May.

In part, the increase in deportations is explained by a jump in the number of Mexican nationals entering U.S. territory without the correct documentation. In February, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol detected 41,341 such irregular entries, while in May, they detected 70,630. In turn, the motivations behind this jump in migratory flows can be attributed to several factors: the economic ravages of the pandemic; the effects of the prolonged drought gripping rural areas of Mexico; the hope created by the failure of Donald Trump in his reelection attempt among those who aspire to the “American dream”; and the arrival of a government in the White House that is, at least in its rhetoric, sensitive to the rights of migrants.

The sustained increase in deportation exposes the paradox that although migrants, inspired by the end of the xenophobic rhetoric of Trumpism, are resuming their journeys to the north, they are finding that in fact, very little has changed. The very same border-industrial complex remains in place to detect them before they cross, to capture them, and to return them to Mexican territory without processing their requests for asylum. This deportation complex continues to operate at full capacity despite the fact that in February, President Joe Biden sent Congress an ambitious plan for immigration reform and reopened the process for asylum applications for those formerly enrolled in the euphemistically-named Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico.” On the first of this month, he officially repealed this policy, which required all refugees to remain south of the Rio Grande while waiting for their requests to be processed.

In closing, the Democratic administration has brought positive changes in the official treatment of migrants, and in the recognition of their incalculable contributions to culture, the economy and many other areas of U.S. society. It has also ended such openly racist policies such as the existence of an office dedicated to supporting the “victims of immigration crime.” Nevertheless, these transformations of the institutions and rhetoric surrounding immigration have not alleviated the situation of hundreds of thousands of people — Mexicans, but also Guatemalans, Salvadoreans, Hondurans, Haitians, as well as many other nationalities — who are yearning to be reunited with their loved ones already living in U.S. territory or who are requesting asylum from the violence, poverty or lack of opportunities that they must endure in their native regions.