De Facto Deported U.S.-Citizen Children in Mexico

Co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation of New York

Half a million U.S.-born children currently reside in Mexico, a population that has doubled in the past two decades due to massive deportations and to the voluntary return of other migrant parents with their children. Currently, there is little information about these “de facto deported” children. Sociologists Erin Hamilton and Claudia Masferrer will address the following questions: (1) how many and what share of U.S.-born children living in Mexico in the past decade were de facto deported? (2) how do they compare to U.S.-born children who reside in Mexico for other reasons in terms of family structure, school enrollment, disability, access to health care, household socioeconomic resources, and community characteristics? (3) how does the educational attainment of deported parents compare to that of the non-citizen immigrant parents of U.S.-born children living in the U.S. and to immigrant parents who returned to Mexico with their U.S.-born children for reasons other than deportation? To answer these questions, the investigators will analyze data from national surveys administered by the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography: the 2014 and 2018 National Survey of Demographic Dynamics and the 2020 Mexican Census.