Deportation and removal from the United States

In the year of 1794, the first immigrants were deported in Massachusetts, following a rush of poor Irish immigrants to the east coast of the U.S.. The passing of the 1794 Massachusetts State Law permitted the deportation of such immigrants.[5] A few years later, the U.S. Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Under this law, new powers were granted to deport immigrants. Specifically, the Alien Enemies Act allowed the U.S. government to a deport any male who was from a nation who was considered an enemy during war. Along with that, the Alien Friend Act granted the president the power to deport any immigrant, who was not a citizen of the U.S. and suspected to be plotting against the U.S. Government.[6]

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 became the first law in American history that demanded the exclusion and deportation of a particular racial group. For Chinese immigrants who were already in the country when this law passed, they were only allowed to re-enter the country, if they left with certifications.[5] Along with that, they were stripped away from the right to obtain citizenship in the U.S., while the possibility of being deported remained.[7]When this act expired, Congress passed the Geary Act which allowed for the Chinese Exclusion Act to last another ten years. The Geary Act also changed the living conditions for Chinese immigrants living in the U.S. as it stated that they had to have a certificate of residence and could be deported if they didn't have it.[7]

In the years of 1919 and 1920, thousands of immigrants were deported as the Palmer Raids began to take place. These raids occurred under the Justice Department, and were led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer who established the General Intelligence Division within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[8] The following act that regulated immigration in the U.S. was the National Immigration Act of 1924, this act established a quota for granting visas. Under this law, only two percent of immigrants from a certain nationality were given visas while it did not apply to immigrants from the continent of Asia.[9] In the 1930s, during the great depression era, over 1.8 million Mexican immigrants were deported and an estimated 60 percent of them were actually U.S. Citizens. These deportations became famously known as the Mexican Repatriation, which tore thousands of families apart. These deportations took place under a lot of local governments through local raids.[10] The Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1952 and created preferences for immigration to the U.S. based off of desired skilled-workers and family reunification. Aside from that, it also made the process of deportation easier, as it permitted people to be fined as well as arrested if they were living with an undocumented immigrant or rented a home to one.[11] The rise of Mexican deportation continued during the era of World War II, through a program established by the collaboration of the U.S. government and the Mexican government, known as the Bracero Program.[5] This program allowed for the short-term legal immigration of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. for the purposes of filling the gap of agricultural workers that resulted from the war. Along with that, a wave of undocumented Mexican immigrants migrated to the U.S. in search of these job opportunities as well.[5] As a result of this, Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. created operation wetback, which was responsible for the deportation of around 300,000 of these Mexican undocumented immigrants.[12] In the year of 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and a new approach to deporting immigrants who were terrorists, as defined by this law, was created.[13]It did so, by expanding the list of committed crimes that could lead to the deportation of an undocumented immigrant. It also granted the U.S. government power to deport permanent residents who were convicted of an aggravated felony.[14] President Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996.[5] This law strengthened the U.S. border control by establishing criminal penalties for things like using fake visas and permitted the deportation of undocumented immigrants who committed a misdemeanor.[15]

On June 4, 2019 a large group of undocumented immigrants were apprehended by Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents at the U.S.- Mexican Border.

After President George W. Bush became President, he signed the Homeland Security Act in the year of 2002.[16]This law was responsible for creating the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a new department under the executive branch. Following the establishment of this department, enforcement procedures intensified with the creation of subset organizations such as the Bureau of Border Security along with the creation of the detention and removal program.[17] Under Barack Obama's presidency, over 2.5 million undocumented immigrants were deported.[18] Obama focused on the removal of criminals, and passed an executive order titled, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2012, providing temporary amnesty from deportation to undocumented immigrants who migrated to the U.S at a young age..[19] The federal funding for immigration enforcement in the year of 2012 increased to $18 billion, which allowed for the immense increase in illegal immigration enforcement and deportations.[19]Since President Donald Trump's inauguration in January of 2017, the number of deported undocumented immigrants has decreased drastically.[20] While under Trump's presidency, U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement has conducted hundreds of raids in workspaces and sent removal orders to families, they are not deporting as many immigrants as they deported under Obama's presidency. In Obama's first three years in office, around 1.18 million immigrants were deported while around 800,000 deportations have taken place under Trump in his third year of presidency.[20]