Florence Otaigbe
As an immigration attorney, I have worked with people from many different backgrounds. Anyone can be an immigrant. However, whenever I see mainstream advocacy and media regarding immigration, I rarely see Black migrants. According to the International Organization for Migration, migrant is defined in part as the following:
“An umbrella term, not defined under international law, reflecting the common lay understanding of a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons.”
Migrants include refugees, asylum seekers, forcibly displaced persons, and those who leave their countries for a variety of reasons, such as finding work or going to school. What it does not say is that a number of these people leave their home countries out of necessity rather than choice. While people are leaving their homes in search of a new life, the current structure of the immigration system, particularly in the United States, subjects them to unthinkable harm and distress. This is largely because of how borders operate and punish people for simply trying to go to another country.
Here is just a snapshot of what Black migrants have been experiencing in the last few years:
- Eighty to ninety Cameroonians were deported on two flights in 2020, a flight in 2019, and one in 2021. Upon arrival in Cameroon, these individuals were subject to grave danger and harm.
- Nearly 26,000 Haitians were deported between January 1, 2021, and February 2022. Since then, deportations to Haiti have continued, with deportations in May 2022 totaling around 4,000 Haitians on 36 different flights.
- Last year’s inhumane, abusive treatment of Haitians in encampments in Del Rio, Texas (near the U.S.-Mexico Border), which included border patrol officers on horseback chasing Haitians returning to the camp in Del Rio after getting food in Mexico.
- Title 42, a section of U.S. federal code that regulates public health, allows the government to deny entry of immigrants into the country for so-called public health reasons. In March 2020, former President Trump invoked this authority—for the first time ever since its creation—to prevent many asylum seekers and migrants from entering the United States. Title 42 has had a “particularly devastating impact on Haitians, who have been expelled en masse without being screened for their fear of harm in Haiti despite ‘obligations under both domestic and international law that prohibit return of individuals to persecution and torture.’” A recent federal court ruling stopped the Biden administration from ending this Trump-era policy.
- Cameroon’s current conflict started in 2016, but it was not until this year on April 15, 2022, that the Biden Administration designated Cameroon for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Compare this to Russia declaring war on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the Biden Administration designating Ukraine for TPS on March 3, 2022. In late April, U.S. Customs and Immigration Services rolled out Uniting for Ukraine, a program that provides Ukrainian migrants with a financial sponsor in the U.S., a key hurdle for migrants seeking temporary residency.
In July 2022, border officials believed there were up to 15,000 asylum seekers in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, many of them Haitian. If you are only following mainstream news and immigrants’ rights advocacy efforts (campaigns, reports, etc.), you would not know about this. Fortunately, there are a number of Black migrant-led organizations who are at the forefront of this work for all Black migrants, e.g., Haitian Bridge Alliance, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), UndocuBlack Network, and Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project. However, unless you have heard of these organizations or intentionally seek them out, you might not know about all the good work they are doing for Black migrants.
This is something that needs to change. Immigrant rights organizations that are regularly in the public eye need to promote Black-migrant led organizations while also naming the experiences of Black migrants in their work.
These have all been major events that hit mainstream news cycles, but when was the last time you heard updates about any of these situations? The news has moved on to the next attention-grabbing headline, but past stories no longer in the news does not mean the issue has been resolved. Many Black migrants are still being deported or detained at alarming rates. Between 2020 and 2022, the percentage of Haitian families detained by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) increased from 29 percent to 44 percent. According to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), “the U.S. has consistently detained more Haitian families in 2020 than any other nationality.”
Knowing the numbers and what is beyond the news is sometimes what makes it difficult to be an immigration lawyer, because I know Black migrants need us (myself included). I can confidently say that representation and support of the Black migrant community is not at the forefront of the immigration law field within the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC). The NPIC cares more about assisting the “good migrant.” The good migrant has not had any criminal interactions. The good migrant came here “the right way.” The good migrant is here to educate themselves and to pull themselves and their family “up by their bootstraps.” The good migrant often doesn’t include Black migrants due to how criminalization intersects with immigration.
On the other hand, the “bad migrant” may be someone who has had interactions with law enforcement. They may be seen as someone not contributing to society “positively.” As previously mentioned, criminalization of Black migrants is far too common. According to the ACLU, “despite only making up around seven percent of the non-citizen population, Black immigrants represent over 20 percent of those in deportation proceedings on criminal grounds.”
In my experience, their cases usually fall at the intersection between criminal and immigration law (a.k.a. crimmigration). As a result, there is a more “complex” case, and it is likely a legal services organization will not be able to take the case because of terms set by their grants. I have seen this play out in real time. I have been in a position where out of maybe about 20+ cases, I only had two Black clients.
This is a major issue in the field of immigration law, and it cannot continue. How are we helping those who are most in need if we are excluding those from a group that are vulnerable due to their marginalization at the intersection of multiple identities? Being Black in the U.S. already sets up people for profiling, discrimination, hate, etc. When you add in being an immigrant, it is a challenge like no other. Anti-Blackness is rampant throughout the United States’ immigration system, and if no one is looking at policy changes and announcements with a critical lens, it could continue to go unnoticed.
This filters into the law enforcement dimension of immigration, where you find alarmingly high numbers of Black migrants being detained and/or deported. Many might think of immigrant detention as something separate from incarceration, but it is fully part of the United States’ mass incarceration system, as the Black Alliance for Just Immigration laid out in their report:
“The data further reveals that Black immigrants are more likely than the overall immigrant population to be detained for criminal convictions than immigration violations. While within the immigrant population, individuals are 3.5 times more likely to be detained for an immigration violation than a criminal conviction, the reverse is true for Caribbean immigrants in particular, who are almost twice as likely to be detained for a criminal conviction than an immigration violation. African immigrants, a greater percentage of whom are recent arrivals than Caribbean immigrants, are twice as likely to be detained for an immigration violation than a criminal conviction.”
The rate at which Black migrants are being detained is unconscionable, and it is interesting that over the years, especially in summer 2020, there have always been calls for racial justice. However, these conversations do not always include immigrants. There is no reason why people should be saying Black Lives Matter and fighting against conditions in prisons and jails but not saying anything about the detention centers that are across the United States. Between 2003 and 2015, Black immigrants made up 10.6 percent of all immigrants in removal proceedings despite comprising just 5.4 percent of the unauthorized population in the United States and 7.2 percent of the total non-citizen population. Further, more attention needs to be paid to the criminalization of Black migrants as well given that this is what could land them in removal proceedings or detention centers. BAJI’s report points out that of the 235,413 people who were removed in 2015, 59 percent had a criminal conviction.
With data like this, it goes without saying that Black migrants need us. When I say us, I mean public interest lawyers. If you are doing immigration law at a non-profit, how many Black clients have you had? If you are doing criminal law, how many Black immigrants have you represented and had the opportunity to advise or to connect with someone who can advise about the immigration consequences of their plea? If you are in housing, family, or any other civil practice, would you know what to do if you had a client who is a Black immigrant? Would you understand the impact of their immigration situation on their daily life?
Moreover, I am sending a Batman signal to my fellow Black immigration attorneys! We are needed now more than ever—especially those of us with a social justice and movement lawyering lens. While we might not be able to support Black migrants through our daily work, there are many Black-migrant led organizations that could use us as volunteers or pro bono attorneys, sources of knowledge, support, and more. Imagine what could happen if there was more legal support from not just other Black attorneys, but attorneys who are Black immigrants themselves. We would likely see different outcomes because of the impact of representation.
Ultimately, I write this post with nothing more than a call to action in mind. We need to show up for Black migrants now. There are many ways to do so, but they must support the work that is already being done. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, and we should all follow the lead of those who are directly impacted. As I close, I am thinking about a quote from the Combahee River Collective’s 1977 statement: “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” This lens also applies to immigration. If we center and advocate strongly for Black migrants, the wins achieved through that lens will only benefit all migrants (no matter where they are from) even more.
*Note: If you are interested in providing financial support to Black migrant-led organizations, please check out the Black Migrant Power Fund where your donations will go directly to a number of amazing organizations which you can also see listed here.
Florence Otaigbe is an Immigration Staff Attorney at Church World Service (Jersey City) and a CUNY Law alumna (’20). She is currently providing legal services to Afghan parolees who arrived during last year’s evacuations from Afghanistan.