The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants

Abstract

Adam Goodman ’ s The Deportation Machine provides a thorough treatment of the enforcement and policy mechanisms that the US government has used to expel noncitizens from the late 19 th century to the present day. Goodman begins by introducing the readerto threemechanismsthatheusesto structure theargumentforthe entire book; formal deportations, voluntary departures, and a more amorphous and informal set of practicesthathavebeenusedbythefederalandlocalauthoritiestoencourage noncitizens to “ self-deport. ” Goodman goes on to show that, throughout US history, the federal government has leaned more heavily on the latter two mechanisms than it has on formal deportation proceedings. In the process, he opens up some important questions about how to best define expulsions as a legal-administrative reality, considering that many noncitizens who are expelled from the US, by the mechanisms described by Goodman, do not show up in any of the federal government ’ s immigration enforcement statistics.Goodman ’ s subject matter makes for a ready comparison with Daniel Kanstroom ’ s Deportation Nation and Mae Ngai ’ s Impossible Subjects. Unlike these books, however, Goodman pays more attention to primary source documents generated by federal agents and enforcement agencies. His detailed treatment of enforcement tactics also recalls Kitty Calavita ’ s Inside the State (focusing on the Bracero Program) and Joseph Nevin ’ s Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond, but with a more ambitious historical scope. It bears emphasizing, however, that the most important distinguishing feature of T he Deportation Machine is Goodman ’ s argu-ment, which focuses the reader ’ s attention on the federal government ’ s longstanding reliance on expulsion practices that operate outside the court system and in the gray zones of the law. His account of these practices provides an important corrective to much of the recent research on criminal deportations and the intersections of criminal and immigration