Eddie didn’t belong to a gang, and he was determined to keep his distance. The same was true of most people deported during the presidency of George W. Bush. The legal tools for sweeping immigration arrests and expulsions had been in place ever since the passage of IIRIRA, in 1996, but it was only in the aftermath of 9/11 that the full bureaucratic machinery got engaged; the deportation numbers had been rising steadily each year since.
