Change in Administration, Change in Deportation Worry? Analyzing the Reduction of U.S. Latinos’ Worries About Deportation from 2019 to 2021

Abstract

Extensive scholarship traces the development and impacts of the U.S. immigration and deportation system on Latino immigrants and U.S. born Latinos, alike. However, relatively little quantitative research has investigated the worries that Latinos express about deportation, explored the temporal dynamics in such concerns, or identified which factors predict shifts in deportation-related concerns over time. Using two waves of data for a national sample of U.S. Latino adults, the analyses explored changes in their deportation worry between 2019 and 2021, marking the transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. Descriptive results indicate that more than a third of Latinos reported reductions in deportation worry over the two year period, with even larger proportions of Latino immigrants, including naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents and undocumented immigrants, reporting declines in worry. Regression results reveal that, aside from indicators of legal vulnerability, other aspects of the current sociopolitical and racialized context meaningfully shape declines in deportation worries. Specifically, darker-skinned Latinos, and those experiencing more anti-Hispanic discrimination, expressing some co-ethnic linked fate, and who viewed the Trump administration as harmful to Latinos reported significant reductions in worry from 2019 to 2021, ceteris paribus. These results suggest a “calming effect” of some Latinos’ deportation worries as the Trump administration ended and the Biden administration began. Nevertheless, the study demonstrates how the racialized immigration and deportation system shapes deportation-related worries among a wide swath of Latinos, the consequences of which racialize them and spill over into their everyday lives.