In 2011, a researcher estimated that 1.0-1.5% of detentions per year were US citizens.
In 2017, the Deportation Research Clinic (the only group in the country specializing in relief for deported US citizens) reported that over 1000 US citizens were deported or otherwise removed 2011-2017; that's out of people who made it into an immigration court hearing and got the defense of US citizenship onto the record, a small fraction of the total number of deported people with a citizenship claim.
In 2020, the same researcher updated her stats in an interview: 1.0-1.5% of detentions and 0.5% of deportations per year continued to be US citizens.
The human rights disaster in progress has been in progress for your entire lifetime and mine. When immigration justice activists were begging the voters not to hand this system over to an avowed authoritarian, it was because we knew exactly how it was already being used, and how easily it could be scaled up.
I'm going to quote Janet Stevens, the researcher mentioned above and the person who has been tirelessly advocating for detained nd deported US citizens for decades with very little thanks or recognition, in her 2018 groundbreaking work laying out the case for open borders involving the abolition of birthright citizenship:
"By failing to question a societyâs prerogative to rely on birthright membership as the paradigmatic membership rule for constituting the group that will regulate future membership, [liberal immigration policy advocates] disregard how the status distinctions on which they rely for their analyses are every bit as flawed as investigations into the possibilities for morally acceptable versions of patriarchy or slavery, whose conventions also rely on the authority of those creating a status to unilaterally and unaccountably define the conditions of those occupying these subject positions."
In other words: If we create categories of 'citizen' and 'noncitizen' based on birth, and then only give full civil rights to the people in the 'citizen' category, we will always have a system that can attack, exploit, torture, and violate the rights of anyone just by alleging they are a 'noncitizen.'
I'm not angry at anyone who is only realizing this now. I understand that it's easier to accept this kind of truth if you see it being done by a person you hate, or a government that you don't feel affiliated with. I understand that many of you were very young in 2011 or even 2020 and you're newly arrived to this fight. I understand that many others of you have been engaged in aligned but different fights that are now exploring the intersections with border abolition, and I'm very grateful for that.
What I am asking is that, instead of catastrophizing, we contextualize.
Is this administration increasing the proportion of US citizens it's detaining and deporting? Possibly, but actually it's too soon to tell: the increased national focus on the abuses of the immigration system may very well simply be shining a new light on the same thing that has been happening this whole time.
Are the connected tactics that are intended to bypass the immigration courts in removal proceedings (expanding expedited removal, intentionally overloading the immigration court dockets by pulling cases back out of administrative closure, firing immigration judges, ignoring orders for stays of removal) going to lead to more US citizens not having a chance to ever raise their citizenship as a defense? Absolutely. Is that one of the goals, or just a side-effect of the overall project to remove people without giving them a chance for any type of defense? Who knows; I don't spend my time trying to read the minds of the white nationalists.
Do US citizens need to be more concerned about being targeted for detention and removal now, versus before Jan 2025? We don't know yet. But we know who will have the best vantage point and the most experience in how to respond: the ones who've been dealing with this the whole time. Muslim, Arab, and Southeast Asian US citizens have known since 2001 that their citizenship means very little in terms of civil rights when faced with the "anti-terrorism" apparatus; Latine US citizens, especially those in any proximity to the US-Mexico border, already take all the same precautions as someone without citizenship; Black US citizens already know that as part of being disproportionately targeted by cops, they're also disproportionately referred to ICE for detention, where they face higher rates of solitary confinement and higher bond fees than any other group; a higher proportion of Asian-American citizens report being told to "go back to their home country" than Asian-American non-citizens.
No one in any of these groups that I advise about their rights is ever surprised or confused when I warn them that citizenship doesn't necessarily protect them from immigration enforcement. They know.
Now that you know, too, what can you do about it? Work to resist and dismantle the immigration apparatus as a whole. Join a local ICEWatch or immigration court accompaniment group; defund the cops, fight surveillance projects, and curtail police presence in your communities; volunteer with a mutual aid project that gives people the resources to avoid getting on ICE's radar in the first place. More suggestions here.
Thank you for caring. Your fear, your anger, your grief, are all appropriate responses to what's happening. Don't let those things push you over the line into paralysis or overwhelm: we've been working and living through this reality this whole time, finding ways to move forward and take care of each other and reduce harm, and you can too.
