U.S. immigration policies and their aftermath, including the impact on those who are deported, is a contentious topic that often goes overlooked. This lack of attention is concerning, as it can lead to significant mental and physical health disparities for both individuals and society as a whole.
Research from the University of Southern California aims to plug that gap. The authors examine the health disparities among deported Americans in Mexico City.
“There are almost half a million deportees in Mexico City that are Americans,” they explain. “If you talk to these people, it’s like talking to any other U.S. citizen. Some of them have never even been to Mexico, have never even thought of going back, and suddenly find themselves in this strange country, separated and alienated from their families.”
Health impacts
This research aims to understand how immigration procedures can lead to distinct environments, increased risk behaviors, and health disparities such as mental and physical health issues, infectious diseases, and substance dependence by conducting interviews with recent immigrants in Los Angeles and deported Americans in Mexico City.
“Our goal with this research is to reframe immigration, not as a threat to public health, but instead recognizing immigrants’ special vulnerabilities from a human rights perspective,” the researchers explain. “The migration processes are something we really need to think about in terms of the health of these deported Americans, including mental health and substance use.”
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Mexican immigrants to the United States in recent years are not rural agricultural workers heading to border states, but rather urban dwellers seeking employment in service sector jobs in major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta.
Additionally, the number of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. has actually decreased in recent years, with 2 million fewer unauthorized immigrants from Mexico in 2017 than a decade earlier. This decrease can be attributed in part to changes in immigration policy, including an increase in deportations, as well as laws specifically targeting immigrants.
Other dreamers
The 1996 Illegal Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act marked the start of a deportation-carceral system that criminalizes immigrants, militarizes the border, and removes long-term immigrants from the interior of the U.S. This law expanded the list of crimes that warrant deportation to include common misdemeanors such as identification or tax fraud, and made unauthorized re-entry into the U.S. a felony.
Many of these laws overwhelmingly target immigrants commonly known as “dreamers,” who came to the U.S. as children and might otherwise qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to stay in the U.S.
Because any criminal history, even misdemeanors, violates the DACA morality clause, these laws have the net effect of criminalizing immigration. For this reason, the researchers often refer to the deported Americans in Mexico City as the “other dreamers.”
These deportees also create a new form of family separation. Among the deported Americans Cepeda and Valdez have surveyed in their study,45% report they left behind one or more children in the U.S., many of them U.S. citizens, disrupting the family’s primary financial support and creating tremendous anxiety and stress across the family.
No attachment
Deported Americans often find themselves in a foreign country where they have no familiarity or even language proficiency. They are forced to navigate an unfamiliar system while struggling to survive, and this experience takes a significant physical and emotional toll on them
“This is a population that is dealing with very high, severe mental health issues and anxiety, distress, ecological distress,” the researchers explain. “We really wanted to look at how these distinct immigration experiences contribute to these outcomes. It’s not just the immigration itself, it’s the transit to the destination, the interception, and then now coming back.”
According to the researchers, most of the individuals deported to Mexico City have no existing family connections in the area. They are stranded in the city, left to find housing and employment with little assistance from either the U.S. or Mexico.
They hope that their research will spark conversation and inspire the creation of policies and programs by both the U.S. and Mexico governments to address the disparities in mental and physical health for this population.
