# Undocumented people
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 15, 2017, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065 "2017-06-15T21:28:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2017, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/1 "2017-06-15T21:28:19Z")
What do they (especially USA but curious about other countries too) do when someone without documentation is detained, but refuses or doesn’t know their country of origin? How do they deport someone if they can’t be sure where to deport them to?
And what about people who may have been born here, but have been homeless so long or have had a mental illness or amnesia so that they can’t figure out their origin?
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### Author:  [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2017, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/2 "2017-06-15T21:35:20Z")
And how about someone born in one of those communes/survivalist/radical religious encampments/whatever that refuse to conform to governmental standards? What if you don’t have a birth certificate because your birth was never officially reported anywhere?
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### Author:  [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2017, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/3 "2017-06-15T22:10:17Z")
This is a big problem in the UK. Those refugees trying to smuggle themselves in by hiding in the back of lorries know perfectly well that they will be deported if their country of origin is known. For this reason, as soon as they arrive, they destroy anything that would identify them. I believe that if caught, they are eventually sent to a detention centre.
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### Author:  [@janeslogin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janeslogin)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2017, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/4 "2017-06-15T22:18:41Z")
One of my favorite stories, from the Washington Post, perhaps, was about some poor dude who had been sneaking across the border at Brownsville for half a century to work in an auto body shop. He got caught and the authorities discovered he had been born here and his parents never told him.
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### Author:  [@Nansbread1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nansbread1)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2017, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/5 "2017-06-15T22:22:06Z")
> [@bob\_2](#):
>
> This is a big problem in the UK. Those refugees trying to smuggle themselves in by hiding in the back of lorries know perfectly well that they will be deported if their country of origin is known. For this reason, as soon as they arrive, they destroy anything that would identify them. I believe that if caught, they are eventually sent to a detention centre.
Last sentence is wrong.
If caught and there is no prospect of deportation then detention is not automatic. They are released with reporting restrictions ie report to a poluce station every month etc.
This happens to about 99% of all undocumented people. Main reason is that there are probably 150k to 500k undocumented people in the UK. There are only 10 k detention beds at a stretch.
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### Author:  [@Warm\_blood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Warm_blood)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2017, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/6 "2017-06-16T06:58:39Z")
In Canada they won’t deport you anywhere if they are absolutely incapable of ascertaining your country of origin. I suspect it’s the same deal in the US, but on a case-by-case basis that likely depends on your physical appearance. If you look brown, there’s a stronger likelihood that you may be deported to whatever country they think you’re from that’s willing to take you. Don’t know about other countries, though.
I’m not sure how they handle natural born citizens who simply lack documentation. It depends if they have other ways of proving their citizenship and just how “lost” they are.
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### Author:  [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2017, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/7 "2017-06-16T09:12:48Z")
Obviously they can’t be deported anywhere. In France, courts order them to leave French territory. If caught again later, they’re generally sentenced to jail for not complying with the court order. Rinse and repeat.
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### Author:  [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2017, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/8 "2017-06-16T09:15:44Z")
“Moronie deported to Sweden - Claims he’s not from there”
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2017, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/9 "2017-06-16T10:45:55Z")
I don’t know (without Googling) how it is handled in the US now, but I remember recent blowback about Trump wanting illegal immigrants who enter through Mexico to be deported to Mexico, no matter what their ultimate country of origin.
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### Author:  [@Nansbread1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nansbread1)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2017, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/10 "2017-06-16T10:54:05Z")
> [@Warm\_blood](#):
>
> In Canada they won’t deport you anywhere if they are absolutely incapable of ascertaining your country of origin. I suspect it’s the same deal in the US, but on a case-by-case basis that likely depends on your physical appearance. If you look brown, there’s a stronger likelihood that you may be deported to whatever country they think you’re from that’s willing to take you. Don’t know about other countries, though.
>
> I’m not sure how they handle natural born citizens who simply lack documentation. It depends if they have other ways of proving their citizenship and just how “lost” they are.
Deportation takes place using planes. Mainly scheduled, rarely charters.
You cant just land a plane full of illegals in a foreign country and say…‘we think they are yours as they are brown’. How did you think such a statement was true in your post?
The receiving country will only accept your illegals if they have documentation provided by the country accepting them. Otherwise tough shit. Its your problem.
UK has tried in the past to browbeat accepting countries with aid, arms, bribery blah blah…
Doesnt work. If they have landed in your country and wont tell you who they are…you have them. Look after them and house them or they will ruin your lanscape by building shantys under bridges. Your choice.
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### Author:  [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2017, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/11 "2017-06-16T11:37:16Z")
> [@Nansbread1](#):
>
> Deportation takes place using planes. Mainly scheduled, rarely charters.
>
> You cant just land a plane full of illegals in a foreign country and say…‘we think they are yours as they are brown’. How did you think such a statement was true in your post?
>
> The receiving country will only accept your illegals if they have documentation provided by the country accepting them. Otherwise tough shit. Its your problem.
>
> UK has tried in the past to browbeat accepting countries with aid, arms, bribery blah blah…
>
> Doesnt work. If they have landed in your country and wont tell you who they are…you have them. Look after them and house them or they will ruin your lanscape by building shantys under bridges. Your choice.
[N.C. native wrongly deported to Mexico](http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article9028529.html)
> [@](#):
>
> The U.S. government admitted in April that it had wrongly deported an N.C. native, but newly released documents show that federal investigators ignored FBI records and other evidence showing that the man was a United States citizen.
>
> …
>
> None of this stopped them from leaving Lyttle, a mentally ill American who speaks no Spanish, alone and penniless in Mexico, where he has no ties.
>
> …
>
> On Dec. 18, he was loaded onto a plane and left at an airport just across the border from Hidalgo, Texas.
>
> …
>
> On Dec. 29, he returned to the U.S. border threatening to hurt himself and the border patrol agents.
>
> …
>
> Lyttle was deported a second time, within hours. With no documents to prove legal residency in any country, he soon found himself on an international odyssey.
>
> Mexican authorities sent him to Honduras, where he was imprisoned before being sent to Guatemala.
>
> In late April, he found the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Within a day, officials there contacted Lyttle’s brother at the military base where Lyttle told them he was serving, got copies of his adoption papers and issued him a U.S. passport.
>
> Read more here: [http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article9028529.html#storylink=cpy](http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article9028529.html#storylink=cpy)
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/undocumented-people/789065/12 "2017-06-16T16:23:55Z")
You can’t just load them on a bus, drive across the border to Mexico, and shoo them out, because, get this, Mexico is a whole nother country and if you’re not a Mexican citizen you have to have permission from the Mexican government to enter the country.
It certainly is true that Mexico has problems with people entering the country without permission, just like we do here in America. But Mexico isn’t going to let that busload of random people into Mexico unless those people are Mexican citizens. And there are brown skinned Spanish speaking people who aren’t Mexicans, and just because they sneaked into Mexico and then sneaked into the US that doesn’t mean Mexico has to take them back.