A recent report by the U.C. Berkeley and Davis law schools, titled Deportation of Lawful Immigrant Parents Harms Well-Being of U.S. Children, quoted on March 31st on the website PhysOrg, found that between 1997 and 2007 almost 88,000 children of legal immigrants were stranded in the United States after their parents were deported. 

The report, based statistics from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, warned that deporting legal permanent residents or green-card holders who have children in the United States can have severe psychological impact upon those children, resulting in adverse effects on health and education, depression, insomnia, anxiety, falling grades, and behavioral changes, as well as encouraging children to drop out of school to support the family. 

Sweeping changes in immigration law enacted in 1996 have caused large numbers of legal permanent residents to be deported. Sixty-eight percent of these deportees, who make up 10 percent of all immigrants deported from the United States, were expelled because of minor criminal offenses, including drunk driving, simple assault, and nonviolent drug-related offenses. 

Current immigration law strictly forbids immigration judges from taking an immigrant's children into account when considering a case. The report recommends restoring judicial discretion in deportation cases involving legal permanent residents who have children in the United States, allowing judges to consider the welfare of the children when deciding a verdict. 

Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at Berkeley Law School's Warren Institute, says that as Congress debates immigration reform, it should consider how current immigration law tears apart families and affects the health and education of tens of thousands of children. The report found that in most cases, the deportation of legal permanent residents is due to minor crimes. These deportees have on average lived in the United States for 10 years, and half have at least one child. Half of these children are younger than age 5 at the time of deportation. 

In 1996, Congress widened the definition of "aggravated felony" to include many nonviolent, minor crimes. As soon as a legal permanent resident is convicted of an aggravated felony, he or she may be deported or suffer other severe penalties under immigration law.