The US Deportation Industry – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine

Dr. Dhanpaul Narine

The US Deportation Industry – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine

Deportation is a million-dollar industry in the United States. A number of private contractors are rubbing their hands with anticipation at Donald Trump’s immigration policy.

The deporting of 12 million undocumented immigrants will make a number of businesses rich. But before you jump all over Trump spare a thought for the Obama administration. It is no secret that Obama has deported the greatest number of persons in living memory. By the time he leaves office his tally will be about half of the 12 million that Trump plans to deport.

It is ironic that Obama has criticized Trump’s policy as being hard on families when he is causing suffering on a daily basis. According to Obama, ‘ it is the imagery of Trump’s proposals that will hurt. The sight of children being wrenched away from parents is most troubling. 

It is un-American.’ It is definitely contrary to the values of America and indeed to any decent society.But this ‘wrenching’ is exactly what is happening under Obama; people are deported for trivial reasons and families are split with little hope of being reunited.

Maria took her child to an immigration office in downtown Manhattan. She wanted to find out the progress of her application for naturalization.

She was told to sit in a waiting room. In a few minutes the security guards appeared with guns drawn. Maria wondered what all the fuss was about. She was in for a shock as her child was taken from her. She was led in handcuffs to a waiting van that drove her to New Jersey. Her child was handed over to social workers and later that night Maria was led in chains to a plane bound for Ecuador. She soon found that she was not alone. The plane was packed to capacity with people that were also being deported. This occurred in 2012 under the watch of Barack Obama.

Maria is just one person in a statistic that has grown to 34,000 a day. This is the detention quota that the US has to meet by law. What this means is that persons with minor offences could be detained and deported. The United States spends over $2billion annually to detain the undocumented. A 2006 Federal Law states that the US ‘must detain a minimum of 34,000 undocumented immigrants every single day.’ In the last five years the number of persons that have been detained has doubled.

Read more: The US Deportation Industry – by Dr. Dhanpaul Narine