After another week of enraging and disappointing immigration news, the UndocuBlack Network is heartsick but undeterred in our ongoing fight for justice for Black immigrants. The confluence of major immigration events over the past few weeks grounds our current advocacy in the lived realities of our Black undocumented community members, both past and present.
First, we continue to work closely with our Black immigrant family at the Haitian Bridge Alliance to push for a thorough investigation into the anti-Black abuses of Haitian and other Black immigrants at the border and in detention nationwide. We have been in multiple conversations with the Department of Homeland Security and we will keep pressuring the Biden administration to end the use of Title 42, investigate the abuses, and provide a right to return and protect Haitians and other Black migrants who survived or witnessed CBP’s unrepentant violence. Title 42 is a policy, backed by the CDC, that authorizes DHS to expel asylum seekers and other immigrants at the border because they are an alleged COVID-19 risk. Countless public health officials have debunked this theory, and the policy reflects the racist stereotype that immigrants carry disease--when we have seen how deliberately uncontrollable the spread of COVID-19 has been among U.S. residents.
Second, we thoroughly denounce the D.C. Circuit’s latest development in the Huisha-Huisha v. Mayorkas litigation to end Title 42 in the federal courts. On the very day a preliminary injunction was to go into effect, one which would prevent the Biden administration from illegally expelling families of asylum seekers under Title 42 while litigation proceeds, the D.C. Circuit--without legal reasoning or explanation--granted the government a stay. This stay allows the Biden administration to keep borders closed and to keep denying asylum seekers their legal right to apply for asylum until at least January 2022 when oral arguments begin, under the false guise of concern for public health. After last week’s events, the world now understands that thousands of asylum seekers affected by Title 42 are Black migrants. We continue to call for the immediate revocation of Title 42--just as Vice President Kamala Harris, daughter of immigrants, called for last year before she entered the White House. The Biden administration has always held the power to reverse this policy but it has instead cowered behind the power of the courts to force them to do the right thing. Now that the D.C. Circuit has refused to make the moral choice, will the Biden administration keep brutalizing and deporting the people it is obligated to protect?
Third, we acknowledge that September 30, 2021, was the 25th anniversary of the xenophobic and white supremacist Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). IIRIRA criminalized immigration writ large by laying the groundwork to categorize immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees as potential dangers to national security, long before the attacks on September 11, 2001. IIRIRA created sweeping new grounds for deportation that disproportionately affect Black and Brown immigrants, and those grounds of deportation plague our communities to this day. IIRIRA coincided with the meteoric rise of overcriminalization and mass incarceration of Black and Brown bodies in the 1990s. The legacy of IIRIRA is that of the criminal exclusions attached to nearly every modern immigration bill that leave our community members stranded far from protection, freedom, and stability.
Fourth, UndocuBlack decries the latest DHS enforcement guidelines. These guidelines were never going to be radical or revolutionary, but they also fall short of the just and humane immigration system President Biden promised on the campaign trail. These guidelines empower ICE officers to exercise their discretion to determine which immigrants pose threats to “national security,” “border security,” and “public safety.” The guidelines double down on calling all immigrants who make the desperate journey to the U.S. and who have crossed the border “illegally” since November 2020 threats to “border security.” The memo does nothing to eliminate detention quotas, which encourages DHS to capture and detain immigrants. We understand this coded language. Even with prosecutorial discretion being restored at DHS, we know such discretion without a radical, anti-racist culture change will lead to more Black immigrants being targeted for detention and deportation. This memo comes on the heels of a drastic rise in detained immigrants since President Biden took office and news about new private detention contracts. President Biden is not only failing to keep his campaign promises; he is purposely betraying the very communities he specifically vowed to protect.
These seemingly disparate events anger us, but they also reinforce our firm belief at the UndocuBlack Network that immigration is a Black issue. At every turn, we see the urgent need for racial and migrant justice for our communities. These issues also reinforce the responsibility of Congress to pass a true, clean pathway to citizenship for undocumented people in this country through the reconciliation process right now. Congress must not abandon immigrant youth, TPS holders, DED holders, essential workers, and farmworkers at this time, during this onslaught and attack on our undocumented communities. UndocuBlack will continue to work with our partners to hold the United States Congress and the Biden administration to account if they do not deliver on their promises.
The UndocuBlack Network holds our Black immigrant family close at all times, and we are grateful to remain in the collective fight for liberation.
