PositiveBookPost\"It offers a compelling reminder that the border issues confronting Biden have their origins in US foreign interventions of the past, and they have vexed administrations in Washington, both Democratic and Republican, for decades ... Blitzer, a writer for The New Yorker, is a tireless and empathic reporter. He follows the wanderings of four protagonists, drawing on deep interviews that reveal in telling detail their humanity and courage; he spoke to one of his subjects, Juan Romagoza, by phone every day for a year ... Interspersed in these sagas are detailed accounts of twists and turns in immigration policymaking in Washington. Blitzer illuminates inside debates, but he is often imprecise in his description of evolving immigration laws and vague about their specific effects on migratory flows. Indeed, Blitzer avoids drawing practical policy conclusions from his tale. Without offering spoilers, suffice it to say his heroes’ resilience by and large carries them through. But Blitzer declines explicitly to answer systemic questions ... What Blitzer does make clear is that the United States has failed to comprehend how aggressive foreign policies have immigration consequences at home. This book is an essential encyclopedia for understanding how that failure played out in Central America.\
Adam Goodman
PositiveThe New York Review of BooksIn his superbly researched and briskly narrated The Deportation Machine, Adam Goodman...comprehensively recasts the way we think about expulsions from the US and their effects ... As his title announces, Goodman presents the US deportation regime as a machine. This allows him to reveal with new precision the vast dimension and oppressive power of an unseen system. In practice, however, the machine has not been nearly as well oiled and effective as the image suggests ... Goodman fails to grapple with the difficult question of who does merit deportation.
