UC Merced

O’Ryan came to the United States from Jamaica as a small child. He qualified for citizenship when he was eleven years old, but his mother did not seek out naturalization on his behalf. Instead, he applied on his own soon after he turned eighteen. His application for naturalization was delayed due to a technical issue with his fingerprints, and took five years to be processed. By the time the application was ready to be approved, it was too late: O’Ryan had been arrested on drug charges and no longer qualified for naturalization. Moreover, he faced deportation. O’Ryan grew up as a legal permanent resident (LPR) of the United States. He completed all of his education in this country and came of age feeling as if Brooklyn was where he belonged. A transgression of the law when he was in his early twenties, however, changed everything. O’Ryan’s drug conviction transformed him from an LPR into a criminal alien. In addition, O’Ryan lost the right to remain in the United States and was deported to Jamaica. Drawing from interviews with O’Ryan and other former LPRs who have been deported from the United States, this chapter considers the transformation of LPRs into criminal aliens, shedding light on the vulnerability and potential illegality of all noncitizens residing within U.S. borders. These stories render it evident that all noncitizens face marginalization because of their “deportability” (De Genova 2005). Whereas most scholarly writings on “illegality” and “deportability” focus on the marginalization faced by undocumented migrants (Abrego, Chapter 6; De Genova 2005; Gonzales 2011; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ruiz, Chapter 11; Parker 2001), the stories of these deported LPRs render it evident that all noncitizens are potentially deportable.