In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s administration took a get-tough approach to what would now be called “criminal migrants,” deporting numerous Central Americans who’d come to the U.S. during the wars of the 1980s and subsequently gotten involved with crime and gangs. Many of them were in their teens and early- 20s, having left Central America when they were kids, and having little familiarity with their home countries. Often, their Spanish was less than fluent.
Here's a quiz. Who do you think was waiting for them at the airports when they arrived back in Central America?
1. The police, to ensure proper supervision and, where needed, prosecution or incarceration
2. Social workers, to connect returnees to services aimed at easing their re-integration into society.
3. Employers, eager to offer them job opportunities.
Before you answer, consider: Militarized police forces in Central America had committed numerous human rights abuses during the wars, and had been, to a large degree, scaled back and demilitarized as part of peace agreements, even as leftist insurgents were also required to disarm.
In any case, the resources of poor, war-torn countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala wouldn’t have enabled police and courts to readily handle an influx of deportees from the U.S. Similarly, it’s unrealistic to imagine that teams of social workers were waiting at the airports to help the returnees get situated.
Answer (3), employers, is correct in a sense, but not if one thinks we’re talking about companies and industry associations looking to place people in jobs or get them trained to be employees. Unfortunately, the real answer is:
4. Gangs, growing bigger and more powerful as they recruit among the deported.
That’s how Central America’s gangs emerged as transnational criminal enterprises. They now had a supply of recruits who spoke English and had knowledge of, and connections in, the U.S. These gangs gained a broader outlook, seeking to enter new lines of activity in the U.S.; in some cases, the deportees themselves sooner or later returned north. Moreover, the gangs spread violence in Central America that spurred numerous other people to leave their homes and try to have a new life in the U.S.
I bring up this dismal history, about which one can read, for example, here, here, here and here, in reply to Mark Ellis’ article “American Far-Left: Make Trump’s Day on Migrant Crime.” I’m not a member of the “far-left,” and I don’t claim there’s never a place for deportations of people who’ve committed crimes. But the assumption that it just becomes some other country’s problem, with no blowback for the U.S., requires not knowing, or wanting to know, about the history of mass deportations.
Barack Obama, in 2014, announcing an executive order giving legal status for some five million people here illegally, also said: “Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we’re also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable—especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why, over the past six years, deportations of criminals are up 80 percent. And that’s why we’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security. Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day.”
But an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data-gathering unit at Syracuse University, indicated that the surge in deportations of “convicted criminals” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was not based on finding the people who’d committed the worst crimes. TRAC’s report stated:
“ICE currently uses an exceedingly broad definition of criminal behavior: even very minor infractions are included. For example, anyone with a traffic ticket for exceeding the speed limit on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway who sends in their check to pay their fine has just entered ICE’s “convicted criminal” category. If the same definitions were applied to every citizen—rather than just to noncitizens — available evidence… suggests that the majority of U.S. citizens would be considered convicted criminals.”
One might argue, in counterpoint, that the incoming Trump administration is serious about getting rid of hardened criminals, whereas the Obama administration wasn’t. I see little reason to be confident that the new administration will be more discerning on such matters, not sweeping up people who haven’t committed serious crimes; but we’ll see. Will the Trump administration also avoid mistakes such as those of the Clinton administration—by working closely with other nations to make sure that criminal deportees aren’t just dumped somewhere such that they’ll cause problems that, before long, will also involve further negative impacts on the U.S.? On that, mark me as extremely skeptical.
—Kenneth Silber is author of In DeWitt’s Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal. Follow him on Bluesky