By Melissa Mundt

Deportation: it can happen to anyone. That is, if you’re a non-citizen- oh, or one of the hundreds of US citizens detained and put into deportation proceedings every year (Immigration Officials Detaining, Deporting American Citizens). And to be more precise, it happens disproportionately to society’s most vulnerable. The poor, mentally ill, and people of color are particularly targeted. The detention and removal of thousands of workers, fathers, daughters, and grandmothers takes place quietly, the dimensions of this human rights crisis cloaked in rhetoric of security and economic expediency.

Anti-immigrant factions seem to believe that “just getting rid of” the estimated 11 million and growing number of people without documents in the U.S. would not only be feasible but economically advantageous. I won’t delve into the absurdity of removing a large part of our workforce and the logistical impossibility of carrying out such mass deportations, but rather want to emphasize the human tragedy that is already wracking communities and families. When politicians talk about securing the border, increasing enforcement, and number of detentions and deportations, they are talking about community members being displaced. The number of immigrants deported in FY 2007 was 261,000, up from 177,000 two years ago (Immigration Detainees are at Record Levels).

What these statistics cannot record, however, is the shock to the expelled person, the devastation to her family, or the impact on the “home” country they are forcibly returned to. The debates about immigration and global economic policy fail to recognize the trauma that is spreading and deepening across our nation and our borders; a generation of American citizens missing pieces of their family like severed limbs: (Tres niños viajan desde EEUU para reunirse con su madre); entire regions of Mexico and Central America with no men; the shock and loneliness of being deported back to a country where you have barely lived and do not speak the language. Even if comprehensive immigration reform eased the human rights crisis that is the exploitation, discrimination, detention and deportation of the massive population of Latin American in the US, the same economic imbalances and trade policies would exist in our countries that motivate migration in the first place.