cover image Deported Americans: Life After Deportation to Mexico

Deported Americans: Life After Deportation to Mexico

Beth C. Caldwell. Duke Univ, $24.95 trade paper (248p) ISBN 978-1-4780-0390-8

In this accessible and eye-opening work, Caldwell, a legal scholar and former public defender, sheds light on the plight of longtime residents of the U.S. who have been deported to Mexico. From 2009 to 2013, she writes, the U.S. deported close to 1.5 million people with either American-born children, American citizen spouses, or both, as well as deportees brought into the country as young children and raised in the U.S., people who had U.S. green cards or driver’s licenses, served in the American military, and/or spent 15­–20 years paying taxes and functioning as Americans. Deportees were routinely taken to Mexico and left with few to no possessions, legal forms of identification, or employment options, and with little or no ability to speak Spanish. Drawing on 100 interviews, Caldwell relates various individuals’ and families’ struggles to adjust after forced relocations. Some live homeless along the border, forming camps of marginalized individuals without a country; others have family members who give up many of their own citizenship rights to join them in Mexico. She challenges the U.S. government to allow deportation judges more freedom to weigh the harm deportation will cause, and to create a legal path for deportees to return to the U.S. Caldwell’s extensive research, astute legal analysis, and readable prose make this a layperson-friendly introduction to a thorny problem. [em](Apr.) [/em]