Alyssa Quintanilla on Ethan Blue’s *The Deportation Express: A History of America through Forced Removal*

Ethan Blue’s The Deportation Express: A History of America through Forced Removal is about the role of trains in the creation and implementation of immigration policy in the United States. Trains, like other modes of transit throughout history, were utilized to forcibly remove different peoples from the United States as a means of asserting and maintaining the settler-colonial state. For Blue, the trains are a way of understanding the journey “through which national territory, political sovereignty, and community…were created and contested” (Blue 4-5). Based on microhistories of individuals who were forcibly removed from the United States via train systems, The Deportation Express presents a compelling and interesting history of American immigration enforcement. Moreover, Blue expertly traces the overlapping and interlocking intersections of immigration, capitalism, and transportations systems to illustrate how the perpetuation of the settler-colonial state heavily relied upon the ability to remove peoples. The incarceration and removal of peoples helped to legitimize the very idea of the nation itself. Blue’s focus on the train is both an exploration of how people are forcibly removed, but also an acknowledgement of the ways in which new technologies are often leveraged by the state against vulnerable populations. Rather than following a strict chronology, Blue’s approach to this history is to look at the specific cases of individuals and the reasons behind their forced removal. These microhistories are used to present an astounding portrait of a country that actively worked against immigrants from all over the world as a means of justifying the settler-colonial project.

The book takes a geographical approach to immigration and borders. While quite a bit of focus is often placed upon the United States’ borders to the north and south, Blue’s emphasis mostly falls on the middle of the country to show how trains actively encouraged forced removal throughout the entire nation. The book is split into three parts: “Planning the Journey”, “Eastbound”, and “Westbound”. This approach allows Blue to look at the particularities of place as an essential part of the forced removal of each of the microhistories that he examines particularly when considering the politics of labor (see “Carbondale”) and the solidification of borders (see “Seattle” and “El Paso”). Considering the specifics of place allows Blue to tell the stories of people who were forced into motion, often multiple times, without losing the nuance of the individuals at the center of this history. No story is handled as wholly representative or emblematic of disenfranchised groups, but each shows the ways in which human lives are intertwined with dehumanizing systems. The clarity through which Blue approaches these stories illustrates the establishment of overlapping systems that immigrants continue to face while living in the United States.

Blue begins his examination of forced removal with “Planning the Journey” which provides an interesting and comprehensive background of the use of railroads for deportations and the people who worked to make it possible. In the chapter, Blue tells the story of Agent Henry Weiss, an immigrant whose translation skills enabled him to work as an immigration agent on trains used for deportation (28). Blue shows how Weiss’ story, which is returned to at the end of the book, is indicative of the people behind systems of immigration. Blue writes that “it wasn’t just some vague abstraction called ‘the state’ that developed efficiencies in deportation infrastructure. People did.” (Blue 27). Weiss is just one of many employees that Blue discusses throughout the entire book, but Weiss presents an interesting case-study in upward mobility by an immigrant at the expense of deportees. Blue highlights the labor necessary for implementing trains as a means of incarceration and deportation: immigration agents and inspectors were hired, trains were outfitted to detain deportees, and deals were struck with railroad companies. The use of trains enabled and incentivized mass deportations as a more cost-effective approach to expulsion.

The book continues in two sections, “Eastbound” and “Westbound”. Given the microhistory approach to the book, Blue’s emphasis on the direction of the trains allows him to focus on specific stops. The “Eastbound” section contains chapters on Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Buffalo, and Ellis Island. The “Westbound” section contains chapters on Carbondale, New Orleans, San Antonio, El Paso, and Angel Island. Each chapter focuses on different people who were forced to board the deportation train at a specific stop. In each section Blue focuses on the importance of labor (particularly gendered labor), class, race, disability, and sexuality. In sharing the stories of individuals who found themselves on deportation trains, Blue is careful to illustrate how the United States not only monitored immigrants but was often quick to criminalize those who did not seem to “fit”. It’s important to note that Blue’s discussions of race encompasses the particularities of whiteness based on American identity. Meaning, white European were subjected to racist practices and, in many cases, not considered white under the structures of American identity. As such, Blue makes clear that construct of whiteness in the United States at the time was restricted to Americans born in the United States. These racist practices were significantly worse for non-white individuals as the ideas Americanness were often anchored in assimilability.

Many of the cases in the book illustrate the diversity of people who were forcibly removed and how the expansion of such categories worked to uphold the underlying logic of eugenics embedded in the system of deportation. As Blue writes, forced removal relies upon a “notion that states should control the reproduction of their biological populations, and that ‘unfit,’ ‘defective,’ ‘degenerate,’ people should not be permitted to exist. This included people of color” (Blue 6). Each of the microhistories that Blue presents exposes the ways in which each of these categories were crafted and then placed upon people as a means of legitimizing their removal. Within this Blue explores both the specificity of categories of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class before considering how their intersections with any other status placed people in the way of immigration agents. Blue’s attention to how people were identified for removal speaks to the expanding reach of the state and its intervention in peoples’ lives. It is an illustration of the intersections what Blue outlines as the core concepts of the book: racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and biopolitics. Moreover, Blue uses microhistories to show how these ideas reach far beyond the theoretical and are actualized on real people’s lives from the early 20^th century to now.

Maps appear throughout different parts of The Deportation Express to show the long journey many people were forced to take. The maps are an illustration of the role the middle of the country play in the deportation, but more importantly they show how trains had a fundamental role in changing the ways that people were removed. These moves are critical in understanding the continued escalation of immigration policy in the United States through the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in the 21^st century. The maps, as well as all of the surrounding documentation, reinforce the realities of forced removals as something that has only become more pervasive and violent. The Deportation Express is a critical addition to many fields of inquiry including American history and studies as well as immigration studies. The positioning that Blue utilizes allows the work to speak across disciplines suggesting the significance of such far-reaching projects.

Blue’s other works on mass incarceration (Doing Time in the Depression: Everyday Life in Texas and California Prisons, NYU Press 2012 and the co-authored Engineering and War: Militarism, Ethics, Institutions, Alternatives, Morgan and Claypool Publishers 2013) illustrate how technological histories are part of larger discussions about borders, migration, and the continuous escalation of violence in the name of nation-states. The Deportation Express fits nicely alongside similar recent works like Todd Miller’s Empire of Borders and Harsha Walla’s Border and Rule. All of these books tackle the complex intersections of solidifying borders and the underpinnings of capital that justify newer and more deadly practices to expel peoples. Considering the role of technology, these books articulate how the maintenance of nation-states is predicated on the policing of borders, boundaries, and peoples. In many ways, the history presented in The Deportation Express speaks to our contemporary moment which is marked by increased policing and ever-expanding surveillance technologies along the United States’ southern border. As Blue shows the reach of the state does not begin or end at borders, even as those borders move ever-inward, but rather permeate the entire country. The methods of removal used in the late 19^th and early 20^th century have merely been used to solidify borders and to escalate the role of immigration policy.

At the center of The Deportation Express are the stories of people who experienced the incarceration and forced removal exerted by the United States in the early 20^th century. These recovered histories are not merely examples of the state’s reach, though that is certainly true, but rather crucial parts of American history that demand recognition. Blue’s attention to these stories shows the very real human cost of immigration policy while illustrating the significance of recognizing those who were forcibly removed. Privileging these stories widens the scope of American history and demands that we think critically about the very idea of the nation-state.