Breaking Down The U.S. Deportation Machine

The United States runs on migrant labor. That’s been the case for most of this country’s history, and the demand for cheap workers over the past two centuries led to waves of immigration from China, Japan, Europe, and Latin America, especially Mexico. This trend also led to the creation of the deportation machine. That’s how Adam Goodman, a professor of Latin American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes the U.S.’s systemic efforts to expel noncitizens. In his recent book, "The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants", Goodman explores how today’s “country of immigrants” is built on a long history of deportation.