What if you were forced to pack your belongings and leave your family, friends, career, home, and life behind? Could you say good-bye to everyone and everything you love, not knowing if you will see them again? That is what deportation is: permanent banishment from your home, family, friends, and job, from a life built over years. It is an extreme action that causes lasting harm to everyone it touches.
Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home is a collaboration between the OHIA and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) that highlights the experiences, hopes, and dreams of 255 people who were deported from the United States, as well as their loved ones.
They are part of OHIA's #ReuniteUS campaign, which seeks to change policy so that more people who were deported can return. As a result of deportation, individuals and families, including young children and people of advanced age, experience:
Economic insecurity, including lack of access to food, housing, health care, and childcare;
serious mental health problems, resulting in self-harm and long-term damage; Adverse Childhood Experiences, toxic stress, and
poor physical health;
disruption of education and career goals; persecution, exploitation, homelessness, and a
lack of safety;
the stress and financial strain of
becoming a "single parent" unwillingly, and overnight;
feeling powerless to help the people they love; and
fractured bonds and relationships.
But it doesn't have to be this way. The impact of deportation is a human-made problem, and the solution is also in the hands of people.
