Understanding the deportation pipeline: families’ Narratives on law enforcement

• In Event: The Criminalization-to-Deportation Pipeline: Community Responses, Advocacy, and Resistance

Abstract

This article analyzes families' experiences within the complex network of judicial and immigration systems, culminating in the deportation or removal of a family member. Drawing from a qualitative study involving fifty-seven in-depth interviews with families in the Central Valley of California, this research examines the mechanisms that push individuals to their deportation. A central aim of the study is to describe the charges or activities that serve to channel individuals into the deportation pipeline and to understand how families rationalize the deportation experience. Understanding this relationship between the charges or activities that lead individuals into the deportation pipeline and examining how families rationalize the deportation experience is essential to understand if individuals and communities can identify the systemic power beyond these actions.

Author

• Yajaira Ceciliano-Navarro, University of Houston-Downtown