Unintended Return: U.S. Deportations and the Fractious Politics of Mobility for Latinos

Abstract

A record-breaking 4.2 million people have been removed from the United States since 2000, with migrants from Latin America accounting for over 93 percent of all removals. The U.S. policy shift toward forced removals (commonly referred to as deportations) underscores many mobility politics and paradoxes that Latinos experience. Their determination to be mobile and leave their countries of origin often results in encountering various legal challenges in the United States that might limit their mobility within the United States and, sometimes, result in their involuntary mobility through forced return. This article is grounded in the politics of mobility literature interested in the frictions created within constellations of mobility that create unintended return. Drawing from administrative data produced by the Department of Homeland Security, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) data, and the U.S. Census, this research (1) documents the scope and uneven practice of forced removal; (2) suggests how unintended return is affecting Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras; and (3) develops the unintended returnee as an important mobility subject.