According to a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report, more than 72,000 deportations of adults who said they had U.S.-born children were carried out.
The reports indicate that even parents of U.S. citizens are among the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants being expelled from the United States each year.
Children born in the U.S. are given automatic citizenship, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. When a parent is deported, their U.S.-born children sometimes leave with them. But some stay in the U.S. with another parent or family member. Some children end up in U.S. foster care.
Effects of Deportation on Families
The deportation of a parent has a significant negative impact on their U.S. citizen children. Children who have lost a parent suffer psychological harm, undergo behavioral changes, and experience serious declines in health and educational performance. Children reported increased depression, sleeplessness, and anxiety. They also reported plummeting grades and desire to drop out of school.
Even more troubling, many of these parents are not the violent criminal offenders that the government makes them out to be.
More than 68 percent of deported legal immigrants have been deported for relatively minor nonviolent offenses.
Forms of Relief