Chapter 4

The War on Drugs: Getting

Ensnared by the Criminal

Justice System

Class Goals• Develop an understanding of the deportation

patterns of Dominican and Jamaican legal permanent residents.

• Develop an understanding of how the War on Drugs has affected Jamaican and Dominican communities in gendered ways.

• What was your reaction to Juan Pablo’s interview – written in ethnopoetic fashion?• What do you think

influenced your reaction?• Why do you think the

author rendered his interview in this way?

Dominican and Jamaican legal permanent residents are five times as likely as other permanent residents to be deported. Why?

What does racial profiling have to do with deportation?

• How does structural racism help us to understand why Jamaican and Dominican legal permanent residents are much more likely to be deported than other legal permanent residents?

• Why did some Dominican men turn to selling drugs in New York?

• What do you make of Evangelio, Juan Pablo and Marcos’ claims to innocence? Does it matter?

Questions for Discussion

• Why do you think nearly all Jamaican and Dominican deportees are male?

• What are some of the key parallels between mass incarceration and mass deportation?

• How has enhanced enforcement of drug laws affected deportation trends?

• Explain how the idea of neoliberal self-rule can be applied to one of the deportee’s stories told in this chapter.

Class Goals: RECAP• Develop an understanding of the deportation

patterns of Dominican and Jamaican legal permanent residents.

• Develop an understanding of how the War on Drugs has affected Jamaican and Dominican communities in gendered ways.