Undocumented and Black
Department Store, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, Via Gordon Parks Foundation
I am utterly sick of the “I told you so’s”, fake outrage, or apathy from an array of establishment Democrats and content creator “activists” that do not have layered, intersectional or deep-rooted activism or are not a part of activist communities (digital, global, in-person, local, or otherwise).
I am Jamaican and Black American; I am a birthright citizen of the United States and a dual citizen of Jamaica. I remember having conversations with my elderly southern Black American father about Trump’s early threats to revoke birthright citizenship in his first administration in 2016 and as an ongoing campaign promise. He stated, “Trump is a fool!” and that “I”, his daughter, would be “okay” because I am American. I let him speak without interrupting him with stories of our shared past but responded within the depth of my mind with a sigh: You never signed my birth certificate. I let him speak because it would be too difficult to explain the utter layers of the fact that none of us are safe. The fear and impetus to organize, share information and be a resource, are not solely about jeopardy to my status or my comfortability. When the 45/47 administration comes for the 14th Amendment, they come for the due process and citizenship rights of all who have attained them in the past 150 years.
Everyone is being and will be affected by the anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-brown, and anti-Indigenous draconian laws and Executive Orders put in place by this administration—and upheld by Democrat-led administrations of our recent past. As lessons learned from the “failures” of their first administration, Trump 2.0's renewed efforts to fascism backed by tech-billionaires have been utterly confusing, swift, and at times debilitating. The implementation of DOGE (the fake-ass “Department of Government Efficiency”), led by Apartheid era South African-born Elon Musk and his cadre of teenage and twenty-something minions, is proof of this.
The random and constant slew of white supremacist executive orders, such as “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” and “Securing Our Border” have wreaked havoc and caused much harm. In terms of immigration policy on the ground, small clerical issues (an American parent not signing a birth certificate), not having the right documents in possession (a birth certificate or passport), being detained by TSA for leaving and entering the United States as a multi-documented person, a pending status due to ongoing asylum hearings, or access to the right documents when stopped by arrogant racist Immigration, Custom, and Enforcement agents—could create a bevy of issues for all Black, brown and Indigenous Americans and their multi-status communities.
ICE arbitrarily targets Black and brown community members with even US citizens having to prove status at a moment's notice or be detained. This has been documented through an anecdote from a Black American man in the Bronx who was randomly stopped by ICE agents and asked if he was from the Spanish Caribbean; Navajo nation indigenous peoples without access to nation IDs rounded by the ICE agents in Arizona; and primarily Spanish speaking Puerto Ricans being detained by ICE in Chicago. These experiences, along with those of undocumented community members and multi-status families, highlight the ruthless and disheartening nature of deportations.
1851 poster, written by Boston abolitionist Theodore Parker. Via Encyclopedia Virginia.
Although Trump is deporting at rates lower than the Biden administration, cutting his high teeth during the Obama-era, Border-Czar and Head of Homeland Security Tom Homan is resuscitating controversial and utterly illegal past US immigration policies that played out throughout the 1980s and 1990s, particularly with Haitian immigrants and asylum seekers. ICE uses the notorious Guantanamo Naval Base’s GITMO prison camp on the island of Cuba to indefinitely detain immigrants. ICE has also political jurisdiction in Panama, where deportees from an array of countries are held hostage in locked hotels and heading to constructed detention camps in the Panamanian jungle, leaving human beings stateless and with minimal recourse. This, along with the new ICE directive to “fast-track” deportation proceedings for thousands of unaccompanied children, demonstrates the disturbing reality of this particular era of xenophobia and white supremacy in this country.
Nonetheless, these lower rates may be less about the 45/47 administration's precision, and more about the preparation and organizing efforts of multi-status communities. Although Mar-a-Lago sellout Eric Adams has allowed ICE to expand in New York City as a quid pro quo with the white house, mayors and public officials in Boston, Worcester, and Chicago sustain their cities as “sanctuaries” or at the least spaces in which immigrant rights and the US Constitution will be regarded…