Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-4ws75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-09T15:18:05.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The aftermath of enforcement episodes for the children of immigrants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Joanna Dreby  and
Eric Macias
Joanna Dreby*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University at Albany, Albany, New York, USA
Eric Macias
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University at Albany, Albany, New York, USA
*
Joanna Dreby, Department of Sociology, Arts & Sciences 318, University at Albany, 1400 Washington Ave, Albany NY 12222, USA., Email: jdreby@albany.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

For 30 years, U.S. immigration policy has increasingly focused on enforcement. This article goes beyond cataloging the harms of such policies to document the processes by which they become more or less salient in the lives of children of immigrants over time. In-depth interviews with 86 young adults raised in New York show that enforcement policies shape children's lives either through lived experiences of enforcement episodes or through diffuse fears arising from indirect threats. Qualitative analysis of narratives of (a) deportations post-incarceration, (b) removals, (c) arrests and detentions (d) direct threats, and (e) diffuse fears identifies characteristics related to each that may affect children even after they age into adulthood.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 103 - 123
Copyright
© 2023 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

How to cite this article: Dreby, Joanna, and Eric Macias. 2023. “The Aftermath of Enforcement Episodes for the Children of Immigrants.” Law & Society Review 57(1): 103–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12640

References

REFERENCES

Abrego, Leisy J. 2011. “Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First- and 1.5-Generation Immigrants.” Law and Society Review 45(2): 337–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrego, Leisy J. 2016. “Illegality as a Source of Solidarity and Tension in Latino Families.” Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies 8(1): 5–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Brian, Cisneros, Erica M., and Tellez, Alexandra. 2015. “The Children Left behind: The Impact of Parental Deportation on Mental Health.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 24(2): 386–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina, and Arenas-Arroyo, Esther. 2019. “Immigration Enforcement and Children's Living Arrangements.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 38(1): 11–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, Abigail, and Khayar-Cámara, Fátima. 2020. “Forced out of Fatherhood: How Men Strive to Parent Post-Deportation.” Social Problems 69: 699–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aranda, Elizabeth, Menjívar, Cecilia, and Donato, Katherine. 2014. “The Spillover Consequences of an Enforcement-First U.S. Immigration Regime.” North American Behavioral Scientist 58(13): 1687–1695.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aranda, Elizabeth, and Vaquera, Elizabeth. 2015. “Racism, the Immigration Enforcement Regime, and the Implications for Racial Inequality in the Lives of Undocumented Young Adults.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1): 88–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, Asad L. 2020. “Latinos' Deportation Fears by Citizenship and Legal Status, 2007 to 2018.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(16): 8836–8844.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Batalova, Jeanne, Hanna, Mary, and Levesque, Christopher. 2020. Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States. Washington, DC: Report prepared for the Migration Policy Institute.Google Scholar
Berger Cardoso, Jennifer Scott, Faulkner, Monica, and Lane, Liza Barros. 2018. “Parenting in the Context of Deportation Risk.” Journal of Marriage and Family 80(2): 301–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brabeck, Kalina, and Qingwen, Xu. 2010. “The Impact of Detention and Deportation on Latino Immigrant Children and Families: A Quantitative Exploration.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 32(3): 341–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brotherton, David C., and Barrios, Luis. 2011. Banished to the Homeland: Dominican Deportees and Their Stories of Exile. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Caldwell, Beth C. 2019. Deported Americans: Life after Deportation to Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Canizales, Stephanie, and Vallejo, Jody. 2021. “Latinos and Racism in the Trump Era.” Daedalus 150(2): 150–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capps, Randy, Castaneda, Rosa Maria, Chaudry, Ajay, and Santos, Robert. 2007. Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children. Washington, DC: Report prepared for National Council of La Raza.Google Scholar
Capps, Randy, Koball, Heather, Campetella, Andrea, and Perreira, Krista. 2015. Implications of Immigration Enforcement Activities for the Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families. Washington, DC: Report prepared for The Urban Institute.Google Scholar
Castañeda, Heide. 2019. Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ceciliano-Navarro, Yajaira, and Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2021. “‘Trauma Makes you Grow Up Quicker’: The Financial and Emotional Burdens of Deportation and Incarceration.” Deadalus 150(2): 165–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charmaz, Kathy. 2001. “Grounded Theory.” In Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, 2nd ed. 335–352. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Chaudry, Ajay, Capps, Randy, Pedroza, Juan Manuel, Castaneda, Rosa Maria, Santos, Robert, and Scott, Molly M. 2010. Facing our Future: Children in the Aftermath of Immigration Enforcement: (726272011–001). Washington DC: Report prepared for The Urban Institute.Google Scholar
Conley, Meghan. 2019. Immigrant Rights in the Nuevo South: Enforcement and Resistance at the Borderlands of Illegality. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2000. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Struggle for US Residency. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
De Genova, Nicholas. 2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Live.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31(1): 419–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delgado, Vanessa. 2020. “‘They Think I'm a Lawyer’: Undocumented College Students as Legal Brokers for their Undocumented Parents.” Law & Policy 4(3): 261–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreby, Joanna. 2012. “The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 74(4): 829–845.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreby, Joanna. 2015. Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreby, Joanna, Silveira, Florencia, and Lee, Eunju. 2022. “Anatomy of Immigration Enforcement: Longstanding Socioemotional Impacts as Children Age into Adulthood.” Journal of Marriage and Family 84(3): 713–733.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drotbohm, Heike, and Hasselberg, Ines. 2018. “Deportation, Crisis and Social Change.” In The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises, edited by Menjívar, Cecilia, Ruiz, Marie, and Ness, Immanuel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190856908.013.18.Google Scholar
Ee, Jongyeon, and Gándara, Patricia. 2020. “The Impact of Immigration Enforcement on the Nation's Schools.” American Educational Research Journal 57(2): 840–871.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enriquez, Laura E. 2015. “Multigenerational Punishment: Shared Experiences of Undocumented Immigration Status within Mixed-Status Families.” Journal of Marriage and Family 77(4): 939–953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García, Angela. 2019. Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Garcia, Hernández, and Cuauhtémoc, César. 2019. Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking up Immigrants. New York, NY: The New Press.Google Scholar
Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2015. Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2019. “Punishment beyond the Deportee: The Collateral Consequences of Deportation.” American Behavioral Scientist 63(9): 1331–1349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golash-Boza, Tanya, and Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 2013. “Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A Gendered Racial Removal Program.” Latino Studies 11(3): 271–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzales, Roberto G. 2016. Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America. Oakland, Cal: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gonzales, Roberto G., Sigona, Nando, Franco, Martha C., and Papoutsi, Anna. 2019. Undocumented Migration. Medford, MA: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, Adam. 2020. The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gramlich, John. 2020. “How Border Apprehensions, ICE Arrests and Deportations Have Changed under Trump.” Report Prepared for the Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/02/how-border-apprehensions-ice-arrests-and-deportations-have-changed-under-trump/Google Scholar
Gulbas, L. E., Zayas, L. H., Yoon, H., Szlyk, H., Aguilar-Gaxiola, S., and Natera, G. 2016. “Deportation Experiences and Depression among U.S. Citizen-Children with Undocumented Mexican Parents.” Child: Care, Health and Development 42(2): 220–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hagan, Jacqueline, Castro, Brianna, and Rodriguez, Nestor. 2010. “The Effects of U.S. Deportation Policies on Immigrant Families and Communities: Cross-Border Perspectives.” North Carolina Law Review 88(5): 27.Google Scholar
Heidbrink, Lauren. 2019. “Youth Negotiate Deportation.” In Illegal Encounters: The Effect of Detention and Deportation on Young People 7. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Hing, Bill Ong. 2018. “Entering the Trump Ice Age: Contextualizing the New Immigration Enforcement Regime.” Texas A & M Law Review 5(2): 253–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Kevin. 2011. “Sweet Home Alabama?: Immigration and Civil Rights in the ‘New’ South.” Stanford Law Review 64: 22–28.Google Scholar
Katz, Vikki S. 2014. Kids in the Middle: How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for their Families. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Longazel, Jamie. 2016. Undocumented Fears: Immigration and the Politics of Divide and Conquer in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Lopez, William D. 2019. Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lopez, William D., Horner, Pilar, Doering-White, John, Delva, Jorge, Sanders, Laura, and Martinez, Ramiro. 2018. “Raising Children amid the Threat of Deportation: Perspectives from Undocumented Latina Mothers.” Journal of Community Practice 26(2): 225–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macías-Rojas, Patrisia. 2016. From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post-Civil Rights America. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2006. “Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants' Lives in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 111(4): 999–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2021. “The Racialization of ‘Illegality.’.” Deadalus 150(2): 91–105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menjívar, Cecilia, and Abrego, Leisy. 2012. “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants.” American Journal of Sociology 117(5): 1380–1421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molina, Natalia. 2014. How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Newton, Lina. 2008. Illegal, Alien, or Immigrant: The Politics of Immigration Reform. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Ngai, Mae. 2005. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Orellana, Marjorie F. 2009. Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Pila, Daniela. 2021. “Legal Status Fluidity: Theorizing Legal Status Transitions and How Filipinos Navigate Immigration Pathways.” PhD diss., Department of Sociology, SUNY at Albany.Google Scholar
Prieto, Greg. 2018. Immigrants Under Threat: Risk and Resistance in Deportation Nation. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Rabin, Nina, and Menjívar, Cecilia. 2019. “Youth on their Own.” In Illegal Encounters: The Effect of Detention and Deportation on Young People 89–101. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Rojas-Flores, Lisseth, Mari Clements, J., Koo, Hwang, and London, Judy. 2017. “Trauma and Psychological Distress in Latino Citizen Children Following Parental Detention and Deportation.” Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy 9(3): 352–361.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosas, Gilberto. 2016. “The Border Thickens: In-Securing Communities after IRCA.” International Migration 54(2): 119–130. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampaio, Anna. 2015. Terrorizing Latina/o Immigrants: Race, Gender, and Immigration Policy Post-9/11. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Schmalzbauer, Leah. 2014. The Last Best Place?: Gender, Family, and Migration in the New West. Stanford, Cal: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stumpf, Juliet. 2006. “The Crimigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power.” The American University Law Review 56(2): 367–419.Google Scholar
Sun, Ivan Y., and Yuning, Wu. 2018. Race, Immigration, and Social Control: Immigrants' Views on the Police. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TRAC Immigraiton data tool. 2020. “Latest Data: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Removals ICE Data through.” https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/remove/Google Scholar
Wadhia, Shoba Sivaprasad. 2019. Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Yoshikawa, Hirokazu, Suárez-Orozco, Carola, and Gonzales, Roberto G. 2017. “Unauthorized Status and Youth Development in the United States: Consensus Statement of the Society for Research on Adolescence.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 27(1): 4–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zayas, Luis. 2015. Forgotten Citizens: Deportation, Children, and the Making of American Exiles and Orphans. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zayas, Luis, Aguilar-Gaxiola, Sergio, Yoon, Hyunwoo, and Rey, Guillermina Natera. 2015. “The Distress of Citizen-Children with Detained and Deported Parents.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 24(11): 3213–3223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed