Immigration Enforcement, Parent–Child Separations, and Intent to Remigrate by Central American Deportees

Conditions to obtain lawful presence include arriving before the age of 16; birth after June 16, 1981; continuous residency in the United States since June 15, 2007; having no serious criminal record; and successful completion of U.S. military service, having earned an academic degree, or currently enrolled in school.

The expanded DACA extends eligibility to childhood arrivals born before June 16, 1981.

To be eligible, individuals must (1) be the parent of a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident; (2) have continuously resided in the United States since January 1, 2010; (3) have been present in the United States on November 20, 2014; (4) have not achieved lawful immigration status by November 20, 2014; and (5) have not been convicted of certain criminal offenses, including felonies and some misdemeanors.

Dangerous aliens are those who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety. See the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement website for details (http://​www.​ice.​gov/​ero).

Details about the survey are outlined in the Data section.

Details on the 287(g) agreements, the Secure Communities program and omnibus immigration laws, as well as on the construction of our measure of interior immigration enforcement, are provided in the data section and in the appendix.

The most notorious state attempt in regulating immigration is perhaps the AZ SB1070, signed into law in 2010. Other states, such as Oklahoma and Utah, have passed laws modeled after SB1070.

See the DHS website for documentation (http://​www.​dhs.​gov/​xlibrary/​assets/​implementing-9-11-commission-report-progress-2011.​pdf).

Florida was the first to sign in 2002. For details on the dates when other 287(g) agreements were signed, please see the appendix and Kostandini et al. (2014) for exact dates when 287(g) agreements were signed.

See http://​www.​dhs.​gov/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​14_​1120_​memo_​secure_​communities.​pdf

Phoenix is located in Maricopa County, whose sheriff, Joe Arpaio, had been at the forefront of aggressively pursuing unauthorized immigrants through workplace raids and the profiling of Latinos (Santos 2014).

E-Verify is a free Internet-based system provided by the U.S. government that allows employers to determine the employment eligibility of new hires. The system quickly checks information from an employee’s Employment Eligibility Verification (I-9) form with records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration in order to verify employment eligibility. As of January 2015, the number of participating employers had risen above 550,000, and 19 states enacted legislation requiring some level of mandatory E-Verify use (either among all employers or by public sector employers and contractors). However, unlike the immigration enforcement measures we focus on, it does not involve the local or state police, and it is not directly linked to deportations. Additional information on E-Verify can be found online (http://​www.​uscis.​gov/​sites/​default/​files/​USCIS/​Verification/​E-Verify/​E-Verify_​Native_​Documents/​e-verify-presentation.​pdf).

Miranda et al. (2005) found that immigrant Latinas who left children in their home countries were more likely to suffer from depression than those who were not separated from their children or those who did not have children. Suarez-Orozco et al. (2002 and 2011) found that children who were separated from their parents were more likely to report anxiety and depression symptoms than children who had not been separated.

Detailed information on the EMIF sur methodology can be found online (http://​www.​colef.​mx/​emif/​metodologia/​docsmetodologico​s/​Metodologia%20​Emif%20​Norte%20​y%20​Sur.​pdf).

Exposure to treatment is nonrandom and may depend on the characteristics of the location chosen by the migrant. If the latter are either fixed or time-varying characteristics, they are likely to be captured by the county fixed effects or county-specific time trends incorporated in our model. Still, in case the migrant’s location choice is influenced by interior enforcement, we use the most common U.S. county destination of migrants from the same community in their home countries prior to the implementation of the enforcement measures at hand as a proxy for what the location of the migrant would have been in the absence of such measures.

The Omnibus Immigration Laws that we include in our immigration enforcement measure are the ones that involve law enforcement that can lead to subsequent deportations.

A detailed description of these interior enforcement initiatives can be found in the appendix.

See http://​www.​ncsl.​org/​research/​immigration/​omnibus-immigration-legislation.​aspx

This information is available online (http://​www.​ice.​gov/​news/​library/​factsheets/​287g.​htm).

Number of parents with separations / All parents = 3,363 / 11,147 = 30.17 %.

SP and SP × IE are jointly significant at the 1 % level, with F(2, 302) = 12.74. The estimated impacts of 7.8 and 9.5 are not statistically different.

NSP and NSP × IE are jointly significant at the 10 % level, with F(2, 302) = 2.64.

SP and SP × IE are jointly significant at the 1 % level, with F(2, 302) = 33.24. The estimated impacts of 15 and 16.7 are not statistically different from each other.

NSP and NSP × IE are jointly insignificant at the usual significant levels, with F(2, 302) = 0.37.

See, for instance, Cantor (2014), Cooper (2010), Dreby (2012a), Jordan (2013), and Provine (2013).

United States v. Maricopa County, Arizona. (2012). Case number 2:12-cv-00981-LOA, filed May 10, 2012. Retrieved from www.​justice.​gov/​iso/​opa/​resources/​4642012510154406​0757.​pdf; U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2012a, b).

ICE distinguishes between criminals in Priority 1, 2, and 3 based on the charge for which they were arrested and their criminal history. Priority 1 are those individuals convicted of an aggravated felony or multiple felonies, Priority 2 are those with one felony or three misdemeanors, and Priority 3 are those with at least one misdemeanor.