Reintegration challenges and resources

As I mentioned yesterday, the Trump administration's ratcheted-up deportation plans required breaking up mixed-status families. Evidence from the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales where I have visited three times provides some evidence.

The result is a shift in the demographics of those deported—more and more deportees are long-term residents of the U.S. with families, homes, and community roots. At the comedor and shelter in Nogales, Sonora, the KBI has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who have lived in the U.S. for decades, and a more than two-fold rise in the number of parents separated from their U.S.-born children. From January to September, KBI intake research reveals that deportation of parents away from their children rose 143% and deportation from spouses 192%, compared to the same period last year.

Mexican and Central American governments will have to dedicate additional resources to help integrate these people into countries that they left years, perhaps decades, ago. The US will also have to provide additional resources to the families divided by heartless deportation policies. When one or two parents are separated from their US citizen children, no one wins. There's a greater chance that these citizens will fall into poverty and require support from the US government, which they might not have needed had their parents been deported. Siblings may have to drop out of school to take care of younger brothers and sisters. US citizens might be forced to move to Mexico and parts of Central America.

You can read what resources are required from the Kino Border Initiative's perspective here. Nina Lakhani also looked at the challenges confronted by the newly deported and the loved ones they left behind in this story from Tijuana for The Guardian.