Review by Booklist Review
Of the nearly three-million people deported during the Obama administration, more than 70-percent were Mexican nationals. Banished by the place they identify as home, deportees are alienated from both the country in which they were raised and the one in which they were born. Focusing on migrants who arrived as young children and became part of American society, Caldwell delineates the effect forced removal had on their lives. Expecting to have the right to appeal in front of a judge, many were shocked by the lack of due process in immigration cases and the policies making it impossible to stay an order of deportation. Often banned for life, deportees lacking familiarity with Mexican culture, language, and social infrastructure face great adversity in establishing themselves there. Seeing no other option, some take great risks to return to the U.S., viewing possible prison time as an acceptable alternative to being separated from their families. By telling their stories, Caldwell humanizes the crises these individuals endure, including those of spouses and children who face the decision of having to leave everything they know behind to be with their exiled loved ones. A stark portrayal of the contradictory, misguided, and ineffectual immigration laws that determine the futures of so many.--Kenneth Otani Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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 15A--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. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A former Los Angeles public defender offers a deeply informed appeal to create more humane practices for noncitizens facing criminal deportation.As a criminal defense attorney who, from 2005 to 2009, represented noncitizens in their fight against deportation after criminal convictions, Caldwell (Legal Analysis, Writing, and Skills/Southwestern Law School) came away with the sense that the American legal process does not adequately address the challenges faced by these noncitizens. Subsequent research on a Fulbright Garcia-Robles grant in Mexico in 2009 allowed the author to interview many of the deported people who had grown up in America and who largely considered themselves American: They had been raised there as children and spoke non-accented English; they had sworn allegiance to the American flag in public school; they had assumed all the traditional American customs and holidays. As Caldwell writes, she was influenced in her research by her own "mixed-status family"; she is married to a Mexican man whose family has members struggling with various immigration issues. In this eloquent book, she shares the specific stories and examples of people for whom the sentence of deportation was a form of "violent dismemberment." The American legal system has long embraced an "exclusionary framework" regarding "aliens," from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the Immigration Act of 1990, which "created an out-of-court administrative removal process for those convicted of aggravated felonies, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for many years." This streamlined approach did not take into account the deep American roots of many immigrants as well as the dependence of their spouses and their children. Caldwell looks systematically at the effects of deportation to Mexico on the spouses and children especially (drug abuse, depression, suicide, attractions to gangs) and how this inhumane banishment should be amended.A compelling, rigorously researched legal argument against the demonization of deportees. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
