Deportation

Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The expulsion of nationals may also be called banishment, exile, or penal transportation. Deportation is an ancient practice: Khosrau I, Sassanid King of Persia, deported 292,000 citizens, slaves, and conquered people to the new city of Ctesiphon in 542 C.E.. England deported religious objectors and criminals to America in large numbers before 1730.

Military occupation
Article 49 of Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the deportation of people into or out of occupied territory under belligerent military occupation:

External deportation
All countries reserve the right of deportation of foreigners, even those who are longtime residents. In general, foreigners who have committed serious crimes, entered the country illegally, overstayed their visa, or otherwise lost their legal status to remain in the country may be administratively removed or deported.

In many cases, deportation is generally done either by the government's executive apparatus, and as such is often subject to a simpler legal process (or none), with reduced or no right to trial, legal representation or appeal due to the subject's lack of citizenship. For example, in the 1930s, more stringent enforcement of immigration laws were ordered by the executive branch of the U.S. government which led to the removal of up to 2 million Mexican nationals from the United States. In 1954, the executive branch of the U.S. government implemented Operation Wetback, a program created in response to public hysteria about immigration and immigrants. Operation Wetback led to the deportation of nearly 1.3 million Mexicans from the United States.

Already in natural law of the 18th century it was agreed upon that expulsion of a nation from the territory which it inhabits is not allowable. Article 18 of the United Nations' Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind declares "large scale" arbitrary or forcible deportation to be a crime against humanity.

Deportation often requires a specific process that must be validated by a court or senior government official. It should therefore not be confused with administrative removal, which is the process of a country refusing to allow an individual to enter that country.

Internal deportation
Deportation can also happen within a state, when (for example) an individual or a group of people is forcibly resettled to a different part of the country. If ethnic groups are affected by this, it may also be referred to as population transfer. The rationale is often that these groups might assist the enemy in war or insurrection. For example, the American state of Georgia deported 400 female mill workers during the Civil War on the suspicion they were Northern sympathizers.

During World War II, Volga Germans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars and others in the Soviet Union were deported by Joseph Stalin (see Population transfer in the Soviet Union), with some estimating the number of deaths from the deportation to be as high as 1 in 3. The European Parliament recognized this as an act of genocide on February 26, 2004. Many Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast, as well as other Italian American and German American families were forcibly resettled in internment camps inside the United States of America by President Franklin Roosevelt.

In the 19th century, the federal government of the United States (particularly during the administration of President Andrew Jackson) deported numerous Native American tribes. The most infamous of these deportations became known as the Trail of Tears. American state and local authorities also practiced deportation of undesirables, criminals, union organizers, and others. In the late 19th and early 20th century, deportation of union members and labor leaders was not uncommon during strikes or labor disputes. For an example, see the Bisbee Deportation.

Deportation in the Holocaust
Nazi policy deported Jews and Roma from their normal places of residence to extermination camps or concentration camps set up at a considerable distance far from the general society where they were worked and murdered wholesale (see Final Solution). The euphemism "deportation", occurring frequently in accounts of the Holocaust in various locations, thus means in effect "sent to their deaths"—as distinct from deportations in other times and places.