To Leave or Stay?: Negotiating the Risks and Desires of Returning to the U.S. after Deportation

• In Event: Return Migration in the Era of Enforcement: Uncertainty and Transnational Lives

Abstract

Between 2001 and 2022, the United States carried out nearly 6.5 million deportations. A defining feature of the U.S. deportation system is that these removals are often treated as a singular event or as the end of migration itself. Yet growing evidence suggests that, for deported migrants, the involuntary nature of removal initiates a new and precarious phase of mobility and decision-making, including negotiations over whether to reenter the U.S. without authorization. Despite this, we know relatively little about how deported migrants negotiate whether, when, and how to return, and how these decisions are shaped by overlapping structural, relational, and legal pressures. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and 63 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in El Salvador—56 with deported migrants and seven with staff who work with returnees—I identify three orientations toward remigration that emerge as deported Salvadoran migrants reconsider their future plans: 1) remigration as the only viable path forward, 2) remigration as conditional or uncertain, and 3) remigration as rejected in favor of staying in the country of return. These findings demonstrate that deportation does not end migration but instead restructures it, pushing deported migrants to negotiate difficult and often painful decisions as they weigh the legal, physical, and economic risks of reentry against their desire for a dignified life.

Author

• Adriana Ceron, Yale University