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House Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere

July 24, 2007
Nestor Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Sociology
Director, Center for Immigration Research
University of Houston

Chairman Eliot Engel, Ranking Member Dan Burton, and other members of the Subcommittee: I am Nestor Rodriguez, Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology at the University of Houston, where I also direct the Center for Immigration Research. Thank you for the opportunity to present testimony this afternoon and to share research findings on impacts of U.S. deportations to other countries. I have been studying deportations and other impacts of U.S. immigration policy with my co-researcher Professor Jacqueline Hagan since 1997. I have co-authored papers about this research in four, peer-reviewed, journal publications. The basis of these publications is primarily a random survey of 300 deportees interviewed in the country of El Salvador in 2002 with the assistance of Catholic Relief Services in that country. Some of my findings are also based on trips I have made to the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo on the Texas-Mexico border. I will concentrate this afternoon on six deportation-related findings obtained from analyses of our data. These findings concern social and demographic characteristics of the deportees, their household living arrangements, rate of crimes deportees committed after returning to their country of origin, difficulties in the process of their integration in the country of origin, types of integration assistance provided by organizations, and deportee plans to re-migrate to the United States.

DEPORTEES AND DEPORTATION IMPACTS

Deportee Individual Characteristics

The U.S. deportation program is basically a removal of Latin American immigrants to their home countries. According to the most recently published report of the Department of Homeland Security, in 2005 the United States formally removed 96% of 208,521 deportees to the Latin American regions of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2006, table 41). Only six countries in the world received more than 1% of all U.S. deportees in 2005. These countries were Mexico (144,840; 69.5%), Honduras (14,556; 7%), Guatemala (12,529; 6%), El Salvador (7,235; 3.5%), Brazil (5,938; 2.8%), and the Dominican Republic (2,929; 1.4%). Two countries, Colombia and Jamaica, accounted for .9% each of the total number of formal removals in 2005.

In our Salvadoran study, men composed 95% of the random sample of 300 deportees (Eschbach, Hagan and Rodriguez 2008). The median age of the sample was 31.3 years, and the mean time spent in the United States before being arrested and deported was 9.1 years. Thirty-three percent of the sample reported being in the United States from 5 to 15 years. Sixty-five percent reported being employed when they were arrested, and 18.7% reported being unemployed (16% did not respond to the employment question). The average monthly earning in the United States of the deportees who had been employed was about $1,831.

Household Living Arrangements in the United States and El Salvador

The majority of the Salvadoran sample of 300 respondents lived in family-related households before their arrest and deportation. Twenty-five percent lived with both parents or one parent or with an aunt or uncle. Twenty-one percent lived with siblings or cousins or relatives-in law, and 22.7% percent lived in households with a spouse and/or with their children. Twenty three percent did not live with a family relative or with no one, and these were mainly migrants apprehended soon after entering the United States (8% of the sample did not respond to the household question).

Of the 287 deportees who responded to the question of their living arrangements after being deported to El Salvador, the largest categories were 12.9% who lived with a spouse or girlfriend, 10.4% who lived with siblings or parents, 43.9% who lived with other relatives, and 24.4% who lived with friends. Only 4.5% reported living alone.

Crimes Committed After Returning to the Country of Origin

When we asked the question of whether they had experienced problems with the law after returning to El Salvador, 294 of the sample answered the question. Of these, 94.9% stated that they had not had any problems with the law, and 5.1% stated that they had experienced problems with the law. However, in comparing these statistics with a long-term director of a social program that works with deportees, he reported that based on his own data the proportion of deportees that commit crimes after returning to El Salvador is 13%. It is important to understand that some behavior that is considered criminal in the United States may not be considered criminal in El Salvador, such as fighting to protect the honor of one's family.

Difficulties in the Process of Deportee Integration

The study of deportees in El Salvador found several problems experienced by deportees, families, and communities in the process of integration of the deportees. A focus group meeting with a small group of deportees (all young men in their twenties) found that a major problem was the trouble they had in finding jobs. The deportees reported that employers were very hesitant to offer jobs to deportees, who were seen as criminals. According to this group of deportees, employers asked potential employees if they had tattoos and would not hire anyone found to have a tattoo (all the young men in the interview meeting had tattoos).

In a pilot study we conducted in 1998 in El Salvador, and which included family interviews, we found that some families complained that their deported family members had returned with problematic behaviors (Rodriguez and Hagan 2004). Some families stated that their deported family members had left El Salvador as good boys or good young men and had returned with drug problems or other problems. Sixteen percent of the families interviewed in the pilot study saw the returning deportee family member as a burden. Some families worried for their safety because their deported family members had committed serious crimes in the United States. While many families were happy to see their deported family members return safely back to them, other families were less certain what the return of their deported family members would bring.

Finally another problem that was reported concerning the integration of deportees into Salvadoran society was that their deportation had brought an end to their family remittances. Before their arrest and deportation, many of the deportees had been family providers, but after their deportation they had become family dependents in households with usually little income. Seventy-two percent of the migrants who were employed when they were arrested reported sending money regularly to El Salvador. Two thirds of these sent money to parents and one-fourth sent money to a spouse or a spouse and parents. The average monthly remittance reported by the deportees was $200.

In another setting, in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, for many deportees who are unloaded at the international bridge there is no integration problem because many of the deportees there do not try to integrate (Rodriguez and Hagan 2004). The only thought in their minds is to return to their families in the United States. These deportees create large floating populations, which local officials blame for local unemployment and crime. At one point, local government officials in Nuevo Laredo detained the deportees, made them work for a day on a cleaning project and then gave them bus tickets to leave the city to the Mexican interior. State representatives from Mexican Border States have complained about the problems created when U.S. agencies release large numbers of deportees in border town of their states.

Assistance for Deportee Integration

Community organizations of civil society have played an important role in providing assistance for the integration of deportees back into their countries of origin. In El Salvador a collection of 12 non-governmental organizations came together to develop an assistance programs for deportees. The program is called "Bienvenido a Casa" (Welcome Home). It was created in 1999 as a project of the Regional Conference on Migration, which consists of members and observers from the Organization of American States. The program received financial support from the United States through the International Office of Migration, and was arranged through a consortium of community organizations in El Salvador with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in El Salvador playing a central coordinating role, until the program was taken over by the Salvadoran government a few years ago.

Under the coordination of CRS, the Bienvenido a Casa program received the deportees from the United States at the Salvadoran International Airport when they arrive and deplaned the chartered flights, which usually occurred twice weekly. In a large room at the airport, the program offered a welcome back orientation for the deportees and provided assistance to help deportees integrate into Salvadoran society. The assistance included the following: money and information to help deportees find transportation to return home, information about social service agencies, counseling sessions to help immigrants who were traumatized by the detention and deportation process, and job information and job training workshops to give deportees resources to find jobs. Bienvenido a Casa also conducted follow-up contacts to see how the deportees were faring months after their return and to see what problems they were facing.

The Salvadoran government runs the Bienvenido a Casa program now. I do not know if the new arrangement is still providing all the services that had been provided originally. I have learned that the program now also includes taking information for the police, which includes taking fingerprints of the arriving deportees.

Another important function that Bienvenido a Casa performed under the coordination of CRS was to educate the public concerning the true characteristics of the deportee population. When the United States started systematically deporting large numbers of migrants to El Salvador after the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act in 1996, Salvadoran newspapers raised public alarm when they reported that planeloads of criminals were returning to El Salvador. This media effect, and the growth of criminal gangs of deportees, created fear and a negative stereotype of deportees among many Salvadorans. While the majority of deportees to El Salvador (and deportees in general) are non-criminal deportees, in the minds of many Salvadoran the deportee is a returning criminal. One approach that CRS took to combat this negative stereotype was to promote of the replacement of the word "deportee" with the word "returnee."

Another community organization working to assistant deportee integrate into Salvadoran society is an organization named "Homies Unidos" (United Homeboys). This organization has members who were deported and works with youth, and particularly with young men that want to get out of gangs and the drug culture (Homies Unidos 2007). The organization develops projects to promote education, leadership development, self-esteem and health maintenance. The organization also attempted to promote a positive image of deportees by involving them in community art projects. Homies Unidos is actually an international organization with an office in Los Angeles, California, where it works with Los Angeles schools to introduce leadership-training workshops. In Los Angeles, the organization also conducts GED classes and tattoo removals for persons who want to get rid of highly visible tattoos. In return for having their tattoos removed, persons have to attend a 10-week workshop or conduct an equivalent amount of community service. Homies Unidos also is involved in housing and health projects to benefit the large numbers of Latino immigrants in the Los Angeles area.

In Mexico, in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, a Catholic religious group prepares and hands out food to homeless deportees and Central American migrants at a church close to an international bridge where many migrants are deported from the United States. A couple of other groups also provide food for the homeless deportees but they are running out of resources because the number of deportees is greater than their capacity to help them. Many of the homeless deportees are desperate men who are penniless and looking for a way to cross the border back into the United States to return to their families in U.S. cities. Sometimes the deported men ask for money to pay for telephone service to call their wives or other family members in the United States.

Deportee Plans to Re-Migrate to the United States

In the Salvadoran survey of 300 deportees, the deportees were asked if they planned to return to the United States. Of the 300 deportees in the sample 38% answered "yes," 34% answered "no," and 28% did not give any answer. Since 23% of the sample had been deported before, we think that many of the deportees who gave a "yes" response will indeed attempt to migrate again to the United States.

We conducted a statistical analysis across individual and social variables in the survey data to see which deportees were more likely to plan to migrate again to the United States. Our analysis found that the deportees who were more likely to plan to migrate again to the United States were deportees who were younger, had been deported before, or who had left a spouse or children behind in the United States when they were deported (Eschbach, Hagan and Rodriguez 2008).

When we asked the deportees if their families in the United States would join them in El Salvador if they did not migrate again to the United States, 23% said "no," 19% said "yes," and 58% did not respond, which I take to mean they did not know if their families would join them in El Salvador or not.

U.S Laws and Deportations

I think that changes to U.S. laws have impacted the deportations of foreigners from the United States in at least two ways. One way is obvious, and it is how the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996 made it easier to deport large numbers of migrants by expanding the categories and retroactive conditions under which immigrants who are not U.S. citizens can be deported. The number of deportations increased dramatically after the implementation of IIRIRA in 1997 as a function of this change. A second way has to do with how U.S. laws and procedures give U.S. authorities greater access to foreign-born populations from which to search for deportable migrants. Across many U.S. cities, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents regularly check for deportable migrants in city and county jails. Also in the U.S. interior, ICE has the special function of searching for and apprehending migrants who are not in authorized status to be in the country.

These two factors combined with the fact that in the 1990s the United States experienced a record-setting volume of immigration creates the condition that larger numbers of migrants are at risk of being deported. In El Salvador, the number of deportees reached 14,395 in 2006, which was approximately twice the number deported in 2005. By April of this year, 6,248 migrants had been deported to El Salvador. If this trend continues, El Salvador will receive another record number of deportees.

I want to thank you again for giving me an opportunity to present our research findings before this Subcommittee.

References

Eschbach, Karl, Jacqueline Hagan and Nestor Rodriguez. 2008. "U.S. Deportation Policy, Family Separation, and Circular Migration. International Migration Review, vol. 42, no. 2, Spring (forthcoming).

Homies Unidos. 2007. "Homies' Programs." http://www.homiesunidos.org/programs/programsIndex.html

Rodriguez, Nestor and Jacqueline Maria Hagan. 2004. "Fractured Families and Communities: Effects of Immigration Reform in Texas, Mexico, and El Salvador." Latino Studies, vol. 2, no. 3 (December): 328-351.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 2006. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2005. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics.