The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) joined U.S. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05) yesterday to introduce a new congressional resolution seeking to address the injustices and harms of deportation on U.S. families and communities.
The Chance to Come Home Resolution, which Rep. Cleaver is co-sponsoring with U.S. Senator Cory Booker (NJ) and Representatives Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) and David Trone (MD-06), urges Congress and administrative agencies to provide deported people a meaningful opportunity to return to the United States. Sixty-five civil society organizations have endorsed the resolution, whose introduction comes at an urgent time when threats of “mass deportations” dominate national headlines and rhetoric surrounding this fall’s presidential election.
“We're trying to reunite, with this legislation, families that have been devastated by our unfair and unjust deportation system that we have in our country,” Rep. Cleaver said during a virtual briefing introducing the resolution. “It is unfathomable to think that somebody would actually come to the conclusion that it is alright to [separate families]. It is wrong and the legislation that we have put forth — we think that if we're able to get this to the president's desk that he will sign it. And, it would also allow the Department of Homeland Security to help us reunite many people in this country with loved ones.”
Rep. Cleaver was joined by Paul Pierrilus, a former financial consultant in New York who was deported to Haiti in 2021 for a single drug offense from more than 20 years earlier and after more than 30 years in the United States. Despite a gubernatorial pardon, Mr. Pierrilus is still fighting to return to the only country he calls home.
“I’m a New Yorker. I miss my family, I’m a family guy. I miss things like Thanksgivings, birthdays, Christmas, communions, baby showers, and barbecues. I haven’t seen my family in three and a half years; they couldn’t come see me because of conditions in Haiti.” Mr. Pierrilus said. “A lot of folks, they’ve done their time. They’ve paid their debt to society and they are now being [subjected to] double, triple jeopardy. I feel like it's just unfair. … And the reason why I actually support the Chance to Come Home resolution is because I know that I'm not the only person that's going through this type of ordeal. I know there's a lot of folks similar to myself who want to reunite with their loved ones and their family.”
During the briefing, immigration policy experts and advocates discussed the growing evidence of the long-lasting harm deportation causes for U.S. families and communities, particularly Black and Brown communities who are disproportionately targeted for incarceration and deportation.
“Every day we deport people, we deport parents who have U.S. citizen children in the United States,” said Professor Bill Hing, distinguished professor at the University of San Francisco, School of Law. “Deporting parents of children, it's not just sad for the child, it actually has long-term permanent effects on their physical and mental health, in addition to their economic status and success in their future and their academic achievements.”
The new congressional resolution suggests that, despite anti-immigrant political rhetoric which tends to grab headlines, momentum is gaining for elected officials to acknowledge and even redress some of the harms of deportation. One proof of concept is the ImmVets program, which the Biden administration announced in 2021 to provide a pathway for deported U.S. veterans to return to the United States.
“Ultimately, with the ImmVets program, we see a program where there's political will to help people come home [beyond just the veterans community].’” Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director and co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center said. “We need to see that political courage to create a process that is fair, that is just, and that will allow us to bring families together, and that is not reliant on who is president or who is in charge of DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”
“This resolution is about the people the U.S. has deported. The unjustly deported include U.S. military veterans, civil rights activists, former DACA recipients, parents, business owners, and a disproportionate number of Black and Brown immigrants,” said Nayna Gupta, director of policy at NIJC. “Many deported people are stranded abroad, even though they have strong claims to lawful status here in the U.S. They remind us that deportation is a deprivation of liberty, an action harsh and punitive in nature with detrimental long term consequences for families and our communities.”
Watch the virtual briefing introducing the resolution on July 10, 2024: