The Racialized Geographies of Deportability in the New Deportation Regime

• In Event: Racialization and Immigration Enforcement

Abstract

Under Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, immigration officers are conducting arrests at a wide range of places across the country: USCIS offices, courthouses, public roads, car washes, and apartment complexes. These settings represent new coordinates within the “geographies of deportability”—that is, the physical, social, and political sites where enforcement actions take place, thereby heightening undocumented immigrants’ vulnerability to deportation (Valdivia 2019). Drawing on data collected and made publicly available by immigrant rights organizers and news reporters, this article discusses emerging trends in the enforcement of U.S. immigration law on the ground. This includes insight into the tactics that immigration officers are employing and the range of settings they are targeting. Since Trump’s second presidential administration, there have been more than three hundred enforcement actions shared via social media and news media reports. This information helps paint a rich portrait of the racialized landscape of enforcement whereby immigration officers predominantly target Latino working-class neighborhoods.

Author

• Carolina Valdivia, University of California-Irvine