research

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains hundreds of thousands of noncitizens each year in the world’s largest immigration detention system. A recent proliferation of federal policies and funding has accelerated detention and deportation to unprecedented levels, increasing exposure to immigration enforcement across the US immigrant population. Yet despite this mass expansion, we know very little about how detention experiences may expose immigrants to unique vulnerabilities that worsen their health even after deportation. Using representative, repeated cross-sectional survey data from Central American immigrants deported from the United States between 2017 and 2019 and surveyed in the Survey of Migration in the Southern Border of Mexico (EMIF Sur), this study examines the extent to which one dimension of immigration detention — experiences of abuse and mistreatment while in the custody of US immigration authorities — is associated with self-rated health immediately following deportation. We find that experiencing physical abuse, verbal abuse, and perceived poor treatment by immigration authorities is associated with worse health among recently deported Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran immigrants. These findings suggest that immigration detention operates as a transnational carceral exposure, with health harms that extend beyond confinement and across national borders, with the potential to shape post-deportation well-being in contexts of return marked by precarity and limited access to health care.

Our findings have important policy implications for protecting the health and well-being of current and formerly detained populations. As immigration detention rapidly expands, identifying strategies to mitigate its harms has become increasingly urgent. We offer the following alternatives to mitigate the health harms of detention in the United States, as well as recommendations for receiving countries to identify detention experiences as a significant health risk factor among the deported population:

In the United States

• End the use of detention in civil immigration proceedings.

• Reform federal immigration law to better align with economic and human realities by expanding lawful migration pathways and reducing the grounds for deportation.

• Prioritize release from detention, including access to bond hearings for all detained migrants.

• Formally evaluate alternatives to detention that do not exacerbate harms.

• Adopt state and local policy reforms aimed to limit exposure to the deportation pipeline.

• Implement administrative oversight reforms to the detention system.

In countries of return

• Strengthen procedures within government agencies and NGOs in countries of return to systematically document harms experienced during immigration detention.

• Integrate screening for immigration detention and deportation histories into public health systems to recognize these processes as a durable social determinant of health.

• Identify deported individuals at elevated health risk and facilitate timely connections to appropriate care and support services at the earliest possible stage of return.

Research on post-deportation experiences has shown that family separation, especially separation from children and partners, shapes deported migrants’ intentions to return to the US . Yet little is known about how these intentions intersect with other aspects of the remigration experience. In this article, we examine deported Central American adults’ intentions to reenter the US undetected and the transit experiences of those attempting to return while traversing Mexico. Drawing on survey data from the EMIF Sur, combined with ethnographic and interview data from recently deported Central Americans traveling through Mexico, we find that deported migrants who have left behind minor children in the US are more likely to intend to return to the US— particularly when also separated from a partner or when a single parent. In turn, the eagerness and urgency to return to their family in the US shape the way deported migrants approach their journeys through Mexico. These results underscore the central role of family in shaping remigration and highlight the broader consequences of US border externalization policies operating within Mexico.

Drawing on an original, nationally representative sample of Asian, Black, Latino, and White adults in the United States, this article examines how race and political ideology shaped individuals’ perception of bias victimization threats during COVID-19. Overall, racialized minorities perceived a greater threat of bias victimization than their White counterparts. However, these perceptions varied by political ideology. First, Asian, Black, and Latino liberals, as well as Asian and Black moderates, perceived higher levels of bias victimization threat to themselves and their family and friends. Second, Asian and Black liberals perceived an increased change in the threat of bias victimization since the start of the pandemic. Third, White liberals perceived less threat of bias victimization for themselves in comparison to White conservatives. We propose that examining the intersecting effects of race and political ideology is important to understand perceptions of bias victimization during the pandemic.