Commentary | Anti-Blackness is inherent in our immigration system, Biden’s executive order makes it worse – By Kica Matos-Nana Gyamfi (Salon) / June 15, 2024
The president’s anti-immigrant executive order further imperils Black migrants seeking asylum
President Biden’s recent executive order severely limiting access to asylum for people seeking safety at the U.S.-Mexico border further imperils those fleeing dangerous conditions and betrays Biden’s campaign promises to restore asylum. This anti-immigrant executive action resembles failed immigration policies that only worsen a dire situation that already leaves migrants seeking asylum in continually perilous conditions – especially Black migrants who are the most unlikely to attain asylum while also being the most likely to need asylum in the first place.
The horrific immigration system under Donald Trump and the effects it is still having during the Biden administration were wreaking havoc in the asylum process thus far. Biden’s newest inhumane policies gutting asylum will only fuel the extreme prejudice already predominant in our immigration system.
Black immigrants experience anti-Blackness at every step in the migration and asylum process as they flee violence and oppressive conditions in search of safety. In the Uncovering Truth Report published two years ago, the data shows that Black migrants experience abuse and disturbing patterns of racist and violent incidents at a disproportionately higher rate than non-Black migrants while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.
The report found that despite Black migrants only accounting for six percent of the total ICE detention population today, 28 percent of all abuse-related reports came from Black migrants. The report also reveals through a Freedom of Information Act request that despite Black migrants only making up four percent of the total ICE detention population during 2012-2017, they made up 24 percent of all people in solitary confinement. And in one of these instances of solitary confinement at Stewart Detention Center, a 27-year-old Black Panamanian migrant, Jeancarlo Alfonso Jimenez Joseph, was found unresponsive after spending 19 days in solitary confinement.
