The Deportation of America’s Adoptees DeLeith Duke Gossett • Texas Tech University School of Law • deleith.gossett@ttu.edu • http://ssrn.com/author=1896971 “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” ~Emma Lazarus America was formed as a “nation of immigrants” First 100 years was a time of unimpeded immigration However, as more immigrant groups arrived, and competition for jobs increased, nativism drove much of the nation’s immigration and naturalization laws Resulted in the federalization of immigration law and policies of exclusion Nineteenth and twentieth centuries focused on the “categorical exclusion of people of Asian descent” Extended to Latino population in twentieth century and continues today The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 automatically granted citizenship to @75,000 children of American citizens adopted from abroad However, because of political compromise, the Act extended the protection of U.S. citizenship only to those under the age of 18 Meanwhile, an estimated 18,000 of these children, now adults, either face deportation or live “off the grid” in a de facto stateless status, constitutionally unable to vote, serve on a jury, seek public office, or enjoy other privileges of U.S. citizenship Foreign-born children adopted by American citizens are subject to U.S. immigration law Previous immigration law required that children born abroad and adopted by American parents undergo a separate naturalization process before the children received U.S. citizenship Many parents did not complete that process and left their adopted children to reside in the United States as noncitizen immigrants, subject to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action for even minor, nonviolent criminal offenses Many adoption agencies did not follow up with post-placement services, such as securing citizenship The American immigration experience has been as much about exclusion as it has been inclusion. This should be a humanitarian issue, not a political one. The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) expanded the list of deportable offenses under federal immigration law At the same time, Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) restricted judicial review of removal actions Divested trial judges of discretionary powers to recommend against deportation of non-citizen defendants After 9/11, criminal history became the litmus test for undesirability President Obama targets those with criminal history as priorities for deportation Many adoptees face deportation back to their countries of origin—places to which they had no connection since birth—following even minor, nonviolent criminal convictions under AEDPA Legislators introduced the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015, to grant citizenship to all foreign-born children adopted by U.S. citizen parents, regardless of age However, it faces a formidable battle and little chance of passage amid current nativist concerns and polarized politics “However heinous his crimes, deportation is to him exile, a dreadful punishment, abandoned by the common consent of all civilized peoples . . . [S]uch a cruel and barbarous result would be a national reproach.”~ Judge Learned Hand