Politicians often invoke the prospect of death by deportation in debates about the fate of immigrants and others with precarious status, like the Dreamers. These conversations have been largely theoretical, devoid of names and faces: http://nyer.cm/472g14a pic.twitter.com/arwthxc97Y
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Elena grew up in Honduras, where her teen brother was murdered by MS-13 for being gay, another brother was killed for refusing to join the gang, and her sister was shot for ignoring a gang leader’s sexual advances after he’d raped and impregnated her.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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A different gang member began pursuing Elena, and fired shots at her house after she turned him down. She reported the crime to police, and then learned that he was planning further retaliation against her.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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In 2012, Elena crossed the U.S. border near Eagle Pass, Texas, and told a Border Patrol agent that she feared for her life. He asked, “Would you be harmed if you are returned to your home country?” He wrote down a single word: “No.”http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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In detention, Elena fought back against this supposed denial, and won a hearing with an asylum officer, who corrected the record. Nonetheless, she was deported two days after a hearing with an immigration judge, in which she was asked only one question.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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Back in her hometown, she was assaulted at gunpoint by the man she’d fled. He tortured her, holding a lighter to her skin. Other gang members cracked her thirteen-year-old son’s skull.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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Elena fled, with her two kids, to a tobacco-farming town in western Honduras, where the man who’d been pursuing her found her again. Once more, she escaped to the U.S. But she is barred from receiving asylum because of her prior deportation.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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Constantino Morales was a cop in Guerrero, Mexico, until he tried to break up a drug cartel and became a target of violence. He escaped to the U.S. and worked in Des Moines, Iowa. A minor traffic stop led to his removal, which he initially fought.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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“If I am sent back, I will face more violence, and I could lose my life,” Morales said. He had applied for asylum a month earlier. He was denied. Seven months after Morales’s deportation, he was shot and killed.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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After Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security created an office for the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, called VOICE—Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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The office is compiling an online database to track “illegal alien perpetrators of crime.” (Data show that undocumented immigrants actually commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens.)http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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There is, however, no White House initiative to track a more sprawling set of legal violations involving immigrants—violations such as those above, for which the U.S. government is often culpable,http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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Read our full story about the immigrants deported from the United States to death and violence.http://nyer.cm/472g14a
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End of conversation
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#deportees? Look up a PhD dissertation by Joseph Esser, U Minnesota, ~ 2010, re: Tongans children brought to USA, thought they were Americans (but never naturalized), deported to a place they'd never lived (#Tonga).Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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