Common Sense Media Review
By Brian Costello
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Excellent, timely, emotionally intense documentary.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 14+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
The Deported
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's the Story?
The Deported follows four families facing deportation in the aftermath of the Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" stance on immigration. A young woman and pre-med student in Texas who lost her DACA status due to a marijuana misdemeanor is on the verge of being sent to Mexico, where she has never lived, and where her sexually-abusive father still lives. A successful businessman, his wife, and two college-aged sons in San Diego who fled FARC guerillas in Colombia and sought political asylum in the United States have been ordered to be deported to Colombia, and are fighting in the courts and spreading word of their situation on the internet. An Albanian family who have lived in the Detroit area for 18 years have taken sanctuary in a Methodist church. A Guatemalan-born man who sought asylum in the United States as a teenager and has created a successful middle-class life for himself and his kids in Connecticut faces deportation despite the strong support of his community who want him to stay. Narrated by Rosario Dawson, this documentary shows the front lines of this intensely controversial topic. In addition to following the stories of these four families, the documentary also includes interviews with immigration attorneys, bureaucrats in charge of implementing current immigration policy, and an ICE officer working in Los Angeles.
Is It Any Good?
You'd be hard pressed to find a documentary timelier than The Deported. While unlikely to change many minds on such a controversial topic, the documentary nonetheless succeeds in putting human faces on a topic prone to broad-brush generalization. While following the four families profiled in the documentary, a question raised in the movie highlights the frustration, resistance, and struggle: "Is this the America we want to be?" It forces the viewer to confront ugly realities about contemporary immigration policies in the United States when those being deported seem more like the living embodiment of the American Dream instead of the "rapists and criminals" President Trump and his followers believe them to be.
Unsurprisingly, The Deported has incurred the wrath of supporters of "zero tolerance" immigration policy. Again, those who believe that those profiled in the documentary are little more than criminals who broke the law by entering the country illegally will most likely not be convinced to change their views. On the other hand, for those who believe the view espoused by the Methodist minister in Detroit providing sanctuary to one of the families in the documentary, "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty," as well as those who are trying to make sense of what's happening, The Deported is an intense and provocative look at the lives impacted by Trump Administration policy.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about documentaries. How can documentaries such as this one dig deeper into controversial issues in ways that daily news reporting might not?
Do you think the documentary presented all sides of the issue? How would the documentary be different had it been made by someone who supported the policies being enforced here?
Besides interviews, how did the documentary present the thoughts and opinions of the filmmakers?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : April 5, 2019
- Cast : Rosario Dawson
- Director : Pat McGee
- Inclusion Information : Female Movie Actor(s) , Black Movie Actor(s) , Indigenous Movie Actor(s) , Latino Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : YouTube Originals
- Genre : Documentary
- Topics : Activism
- Character Strengths : Compassion
- Run time : 91 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : September 30, 2025
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