{"id":1561,"date":"2025-09-25T19:09:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T19:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2025-10-01T19:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:10:08","slug":"deportations-in-the-u-s-a-history-of-racism-and-exclusion-that-repeats-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/american-community-media\/deportations-in-the-u-s-a-history-of-racism-and-exclusion-that-repeats-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Deportations in the U.S.: A History of Racism and Exclusion That Repeats Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UCLA researchers presented Mapping Deportations<\/em>, a website that documents more than a century of expulsions in the U.S. Their conclusion is blunt: deportations are not random, but part of a historical system designed to exclude nonwhite communities.<\/strong>

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For over a century, deportations in the United States have functioned as a tool of racial and social control. That is the central conclusion of Mapping Deportations<\/a><\/em>, an interactive platform that documents and visualizes expulsion patterns in the country since 1895.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue was examined during a briefing organized by American Community Media <\/a>(ACoM), featuring three scholars from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): historian Kelly Lytle Hern\u00e1ndez, director of the Million Dollar Hoods project; Mariah Tso, a geographic information systems (GIS) specialist; and Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy. Their presentations showed that today\u2019s immigration debates \u2014from Title 42 to the arrival of Ukrainian refugees\u2014 cannot be understood without looking back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deportations as a Racial Tool<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historian Kelly Lytle Hern\u00e1ndez explained that Mapping Deportations<\/em> was born in response to an obvious gap: the lack of a clear historical record showing how expulsions have systematically targeted racialized communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUntil now, no one had built a dynamic graph showing how deportations have been used as a tool of racial banishment. We decided to build this map to tell a story that could not previously be told,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project, available online, allows users to explore deportations by year, country of origin, and type of procedure (orders, exclusions, voluntary departures). It also connects this process with other mechanisms of control, such as Indigenous removal, slavery, and mass incarceration. For Lytle Hern\u00e1ndez, this is not a broken system \u2014 it is one that works exactly as designed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She outlined five historical eras of deportation in the U.S.: from the exclusion of free Black people in the 19th century and the criminalization of Mexican migration in 1929, to the creation in the last three decades of the largest detention and deportation system in the world. By her estimate, more than 25 million people have been expelled during this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She emphasized that more than 96% of deportation orders have fallen on nonwhite people, with Mexico and Central America as the main countries of origin. \u201cThere is nothing new in what we see today. It is the escalation of a system that was already in place,\u201d she stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maps and Data That Expose Contradictions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mariah Tso\u2019s role in the project has been to transform scattered data into an accessible visual system that shows how certain policies have been reinforced or weakened over time. The maps and timeline developed by the team allow journalists, activists, and academics to trace connections between laws and expulsion patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most striking examples is the 1954 Operation Wetback, a campaign of mass deportations targeting the Mexican community. The visualizations demonstrate that the tactics used then \u2014sweeping raids, public stigmatization, and forced expulsions\u2014 are not so different from those employed today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happened in 1954 is not different from what we see now. History repeats itself under other names,\u201d the researchers noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The maps also expose historical contradictions. In 1929, while laws were passed to restrict the arrival of Africans and Caribbeans, an amnesty program was implemented for Europeans and Canadians. That statute was renewed until 1996, when it was left to expire. According to Tso and her team, had it remained in place, millions of Mexicans and Central Americans would have been legalized today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform also enables comparisons between past policies and contemporary measures. For example, it shows how the Biden administration allowed half a million Ukrainians to enter legally, while Haitians, Afghans, and Venezuelans faced immediate deportations. This disparity, the team emphasized, is a clear reflection of the persistence of racial criteria in U.S. immigration policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discrimination Alive in the Present<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahilan Arulanantham, attorney and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy, stressed that racial bias is not just a relic of the past but an ongoing reality. He pointed to the use of Title 42 during the pandemic as a clear example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven under the Biden administration, we saw laws with openly racial roots being defended. Title 42 was applied to Central Americans, but Ukrainians were exempt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arulanantham also reviewed key court decisions, such as Carlson v. Landon<\/em> (1952), which gave the government the authority to imprison immigrants for alleged ideological affiliations. The case of David Hong, a Chinese immigrant who had served in the U.S. Army and was accused of communist ties, illustrates how entire communities have been criminalized in the name of national security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also denounced the endurance of racist narratives that sustain these policies. He cited Donald Trump\u2019s claims that immigrants were \u201cpoisoning the nation\u2019s blood\u201d or that Venezuela had \u201cemptied its prisons\u201d to send people to the U.S. \u201cThis is the classic example of racism: generalizing about a national group based on stereotypes,\u201d Arulanantham recalled, citing a court\u2019s ruling in response to such statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked whether the U.S. could ever \u201cbecome a white country again,\u201d his response was categorical: \u201cThe United States has never been a white country. What has existed are systems \u2014slavery, exclusion, deportations, mass incarceration\u2014 designed to uphold a racist infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conference made it clear that deportations are not an isolated or temporary phenomenon, but part of a historical infrastructure of racial exclusion. Mapping Deportations<\/em> seeks to provide tools to understand how this system was designed and consolidated, and to help journalists and citizens connect past and present in their narratives.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UCLA researchers presented Mapping Deportations, a website that documents more than a century of expulsions in the U.S. Their conclusion is blunt: deportations are not random, but part of a historical system designed to exclude nonwhite communities. For over a century, deportations in the United States have functioned as a tool of racial and social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1563,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[686],"tags":[1277,196,1818,130],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-community-media","tag-american-community-media","tag-california","tag-deportations","tag-immigration"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavoz.us.com\/homepage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}