The Deportation Machine

Deportation policy in the United States is nonsensical because it is determined by two opposing impulses: racist hate and greed. We want immigrants because they do cheap work we won't do ourselves, but we don't want them because they represent, in the eyes of some Americans, a threat to our way of life. . . . Goodman is sharp on this contradiction. He demonstrates that the federal government's immigration policy emerges from a desire both to control the borders and to cater to employers, who want to maintain a 'well-regulated, exploitable migrant labor force. ---Rachel Nolan, Harper's Magazine Could not be timelier. The Deportation Machine provides new, crucial insights into the history of migrant expulsion and the origins of today's crises. ---Hilary Goodfriend, NACLA Report on the Americas Adam Goodman, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, examines how immigration policies and practices have been shaped as much by those who interpret, administer, execute and enforce the laws as by those who write them. . . . Although these measures may appear extreme, distasteful and even un-American, they are, Goodman reminds us, a continuation rather than a deviation from past practices. ---David Nasaw, New York Times Book Review Exacting study of the historical roots of U.S. deportation policies. . . . [Goodman] confidently handles arcane historical details and a volatile subject. A well-researched historical discussion with clear current relevance. * Kirkus Reviews * In his superbly researched and briskly narrated The Deportation Machine, Adam Goodman, an assistant professor of history and Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, comprehensively recasts the way we think about expulsions from the US and their effects. ---Julia Preston, New York Review of Books Winner of the PROSE Award in North American History, Association of American Publishers Finalist for the Shapiro Book Prize, The Shapiro Center for American History and Culture at The Huntington