Latinos Disproportionately Hit By Trump Deportations
Story by Selen Ozturk for Ethnic Media Services
As Trump’s second administration realizes its promises of mass deportation, nonwhite and especially Latino immigrants are bearing the brunt.
As Trump’s second administration realizes its promises of mass deportation, nonwhite and especially Latino immigrants are bearing the brunt.
Even accounting for greater enforcement at the country’s southern border, Latino undocumented immigrants face far heavier consequences than their white counterparts for the same offense of unauthorized entry, immigration experts say — and historically, this is nothing new.
“If there are ICE officers or others in the immigration system acting with racial malice, that’s still dwarfed by the structural issues,” said Charles Kamasaki, senior cabinet advisor for UnidosUS, the country’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization. “When you say things like structural racism, many people assume you’re crying ‘racist,’ but it’s the opposite. Even if nobody acts with racial motivation, you’re still going to get an unequal outcome.”
Trump’s promises to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history” on the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants will continue a historical trend most heavily impacting Latinos.
Although Mexican nationals alone fell from 57% of the country’s undocumented population in 2007 to less than 50% in 2017, an estimated 96.7% of deported individuals in 2013 were Latino, with Mexicans comprising a major share, according to a 2019 Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund report.
“Trump broke the norm against saying it’s about race,” said Kamasaki. “Say it outright, and you may attract more people than you’ll repel by speaking in terms like ‘I’m not a racist. I’m just an America First person.’”
“I’m from South Texas. My niece’s Latino husband voted for Obama, then Clinton, then Trump twice,” he continued. “Comparing recent Latino arrivals to his own, he viewed Biden’s policy as working against him, because he worked harder to come here than these newcomers. In his mind, Trump will crack down on the border, but he won’t be affected because he’s not a criminal.”
Trump has promised to launch “the largest deportation program of criminals” in U.S. history; although data within his term is not yet released, the criminal share of deportations is rising.
Between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024, 71.7%, or over 81,312 of a total 113,431 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests, were of noncitizens with criminal convictions or pending charges — compared to 43% of a total 170,590 noncitizen arrests the previous year range.
This year so far, ICE has arrested over 8,200 people between January 22 and 31, with an average of 826 arrests a day since Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
If this rate continues, this will amount to nearly 25,000 arrests in 30 days — more than any other month in the last 11 years.
“The broad public narrative is that these people are coming here to have babies and get on welfare. The overwhelming majority are coming to work, not for benefits, because they’re not eligible most of the time. But I fear we’re creating a subclass of kids of undocumented or even legal immigrants in households we’re keeping poor,” said Kamasaki.
“I suspect something similar is going to happen with effects of the Child Tax Credit,” he added, referring to Trump’s 2017 measure excluding children of undocumented immigrants or children without valid social security numbers from household tax credits — even if the children were born in the U.S., and therefore citizens.
Even in recent history, racialized impacts of anti-immigrant policy have been standard.
In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), excluding illegal and many legal immigrants from federal welfare benefits like food stamps, Medicaid and SSI, in a national first.
The bill also prevented most Latinos crossing the southern border from receiving green cards
Before this bill, it was far more common for immigrants who entered the U.S. unlawfully to adjust their status to become lawful permanent residents.
In 1995, for instance, around 50,000 undocumented immigrants applied for a green card this way; were this path to have remained, the country’s undocumented population would be about half what it is now.
“There’s a centuries-long history in the U.S. of immigrants thinking that they came the right way, or they were the right kind of immigrant, and that newer immigrants are the wrong kind,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.
“Benjamin Franklin even talked about the dangers of Germans unwilling to assimilate,” she continued. “And now, Trump and others is using language about ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ that hasn’t been used in quite a while.”
In 2019, 67% of U.S. undocumented immigrants, or 7,381,000, came from Mexico and Central America; 15% from Asia; 8% from South America; 4% from Europe; 3% from Africa; and 3% from the Caribbean.
Data on mid-20th century undocumented immigrants is scarce, but in 1960, 19.1% of all U.S. immigrants came from the Americas; 5% from Asia; 74.5% from Europe; 0.4% from Africa; and 0.4% from Oceania, with 0.6% unreported.
In contrast to today’s unauthorized immigrants, Europeans faced far less repercussions and, before the ‘70s, no welfare restrictions.
All immigrants who entered illegally before 1940 were protected by the statute of limitations. For others, it was still very rare for the government to deport parents of U.S. citizens before 1976, and until 1986, it wasn’t illegal to hire an undocumented immigrant.
“Many immigrants who come without status are coming because there’s strong demand from employers,” said Gelatt. “Right now, our employment based permanent system is high-skilled with the H-1B visa, while for low-paid or middle-skilled jobs like agricultural work or caregiving, we have temporary and seasonal visas, but no employment-based permanent pathway.”
“This is a cyclical pattern in American history,” said Juan Perea, professor of constitutional law, employment law and race relations at Loyola University. “The rallying cry is ‘They’re taking our jobs’ or ‘they’re not like us.’”
“White Americans don’t really compete with Mexican laborers, but a majority of white people are very angry about their economic well-being, and it feeds this anger projected against a population that has nothing to do with the reasons why people are angry, except that they’re not white or English-speaking,” he continued. “Every time there’s been a deportation like this, the publicly stated justifications are very similar.”
In describing his deportation plans, for instance, Trump has referenced President Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback.”
In the 1954 initiative, border officials and local enforcement moved — they claimed — over 1 million Mexicans south of the border, often to distant areas without food or water.
88 immigrants died in the heat, and historians have since argued that far fewer were actually deported, as many were apprehended several times, while many U.S. citizens were also mistakenly deported.
“The most important element of improved policy for undocumented people: Take them out of situations of being too scared to even imagine enforcing their rights,” said Perea. “Recognize that undocumented people economically subsidize our lifestyles by keeping the cost of vegetables, construction, restaurants and hotels more manageable, because they’re paid less than they deserve.”
“The very first naturalization statute in the U.S., in 1790, limited citizenship to free white men,” he explained. “The only people who could fully belong to the nation were white men. This was a uniform consensus in the late 18th century, when the Constitution was drafted.”
“You start with a white country, and what happens when it starts to become more brown? A lot of people get very upset,” Perea added. “It’s an old upset. A changing population brings cultural change.”
