FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Contact: Asha Noor, asha@africans.us, (202) 420-9744
Through the organizing of millions of voters, including thousands of naturalized citizen immigrants, the Trump administration was voted out. President Joe Biden’s wave of Day One Executive Orders included orders that sought to both address and rectify years of harmful policy. One of those crucial executive orders was a 100-day deportation moratorium issued on January 20. The moratorium represented a previously-unimaginable collective exhale from thousands of Black and brown people--both those in detention and the people who love them. On January 26, Fifth Circuit Judge Drew Tipton of Texas affirmed the first attack on this progress with a 14-day Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the 100-day pause on removals, allowing removals to resume. This blatantly unjust TRO prohibits ICE, CBP, and all other DHS agencies from enforcing and implementing the deportation moratorium described in section C of the Presidential Memorandum. The regressive, spiteful lawsuit was filed by Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton who baselessly argued that the state of Texas would be “irreparably harmed” by the 100-day moratorium on removals. The deportation moratorium must be allowed to go back into immediate effect, and all efforts to destroy the moratorium must be resisted fiercely by people everywhere.
Let’s talk about irreparable harm. Just two days after the TRO, on January 28, ICE hurriedly deported a group of chained and horrified Black immigrants from Alexandria, Louisiana to Kingston, Jamaica. The United States jailed and consequently deported more than one thousand Black immigrants in fiscal year 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic. Amongst those deported were children including babies as young as six months old sent to countries like Haiti and Cameroon, countries with civil unrest, violent insurgencies, and political repression. If these actions don’t constitute irreparable harm to individuals deported and their families, we don't know what does. In its lawsuit, the Texas Attorney General mentioned the financial harms the moratorium will cause for the state, but conveniently omitted the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent on chartered flights for deportations in just the last few months. It is a farce for Judge Tipton and Attorney General Paxton to depict allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in Texas during the moratorium as any type of “irreparable harm” to the state. The Texas state leadership and all who facilitated this TRO are complicit in the imminent harm--violence, danger, and death--that anyone deported in the next 14 days will face.
As a community that is the constant target of punitive policies rooted in anti-Blackness and anti-immigrant sentiments, we were not surprised by this immediate and brazen attempt to halt the 100-day deportation moratorium. In issuing the moratorium, the Biden/Harris Administration made an important first step towards assessing exactly what is wrong with the immigration system, instead of barreling ahead using misguided and cruel removal priorities and policies. In order to keep their pledge of healing the country, the White House must be unwaveringly bold and prepared to explicitly fight back against white supremacy. Black and brown lives depend on this fight, and our communities will no longer accept anything less from those we organized to put in power. The Biden Administration must put an end to targeting and arresting immigrants. We won’t stand for one more deportation or family separated, nor one more child caged, nor one more death at the hands of ICE and CBP.
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About the Organizations
The UndocuBlack Network (UBN), founded in 2016, is a multigenerational network of currently and formerly undocumented Black people that fosters community, facilitates access to resources, and contributes to transforming the realities of our people so we are thriving and living our fullest lives. UBN has chapters in New York City, the DC/MD/VA area, and Los Angeles, CA.
Adhikaar (Nepali: rights) is a New York based non-profit, organizing the Nepali-speaking community to promote human rights and social justice for all. We are a women-led workers’ center and community center focused on workers’ rights, immigration rights, access to affordable healthcare and language justice. We organize the Nepali-speaking community to create broader social change; build coalitions on advocacy campaigns that address our community's needs; center women and the most impacted communities in our leadership; engage members in participatory action research; and implement community education, workplace development training, and support services.
African Communities Together (ACT) is an organization of African immigrants fighting for civil rights, opportunity, and a better life for our families here in the U.S. and worldwide. ACT empowers African immigrants to integrate socially, get ahead economically, and engage civically. We connect African immigrants to critical services, help Africans develop as leaders, and organize our communities on the issues that matter.
Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit community organization based in Southern California that advocates for fair and humane immigration policies and connects migrants with humanitarian, legal, and social services, with a particular focus on Black migrants, the Haitian community, women, LGBTQAI+ individuals and survivors of torture and other human rights abuses. Since 2015, HBA has provided services to asylum seekers and other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, in U.S. detention, and during U.S. immigration proceedings.
National Network for Arab American Community (NNAAC) is a national consortium of independent Arab American community-based organizations. The Network’s primary mission is to build the capacity of Arab American non profit organizations that focus on the needs and issues impacting their local community while collectively addressing those issues nationally.
