Yes, Immigration Is Our (Black) Fight
As recent protests against a wave of cruel, invasive ICE raids in Los Angeles and other cities were met with militarized suppression by the Trump Administration, a crooked narrative began circulating online: that immigrant justice is simply not Black people’s business, and protesting ICE raids is not Black people’s fight. The usual dynamics played out from there; Black immigrant advocates and diaspora-centric thinkers rolled out Black immigrant data while people with more reductive racial and civil liberties analyses resisted a unifying argument for solidarity.
Regardless of what internet squabbles or “diaspora wars” crop up like clockwork, one thing is abundantly clear: the Trump Administration’s immigration policies are, among other things, undeniably and self-evidently anti-Black.
One need only view the June 4, 2025 Executive Order enacting a new Trump travel ban, with full restrictions and limited entry into the U.S. for nationals of Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela face partial restrictions on entry. With the exception of Haiti and Cuba representing the (Black and Latinx) Caribbean, the list consists overwhelmingly of African and majority-Muslim nations. We are reliving the 2017 Muslim and African Ban, which was patently anti-Black and Islamaphobic then as it is now. Mere weeks later, news outlets reported that the Trump Administration is considering restricting entry into the U.S. for nationals of 36 additional countries:
Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia
Africa: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Asia and Beyond: Bhutan, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu
Between the Executive Order and the contemplated bans, the Trump Administration wants to limit immigration and travel from 8 Caribbean nations and 35 African nations. The message could not be clearer. The Trump Administration wants to turn the clock back to before the immigration achievements of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which rid the U.S. immigration system of quotas and opened up migration pathways to the U.S. from the vast, non-white world.
As I discussed in my blog about wedge issues and birthright citizenship, Black citizenship in the U.S. is deeply conditional and thus eminently vulnerable. One need only look at the harrowing story of Peter Sean Brown, a Black U.S. citizen who was held in local jail in Florida under an ICE detainer in 2018. ICE had wrongfully identified him as a national of Jamaica, and asked local authorities to keep him detained as they prepared for his deportation. Despite stating his U.S. citizenship (Mr. Brown was born in Philadelphia, and had only visited Jamaica once on a cruise), local law enforcement did not listen. Only when a friend provided ICE officials with a copy of Mr. Brown’s birth certificate was Mr. Brown released from custody. Represented by the ACLU of Florida and other advocates, Mr. Brown successfully sued the local sheriff who honored the wrongful ICE detainer, with a federal court finding in May 2025 that his Fourth Amendment rights were unlawfully violated—seven years after his initial ordeal. How many more Black Americans may be swept up in the desperate, haphazard ICE enforcement actions that are plaguing cities nationwide? How many Black Americans will have the means and community support to provide proof of their citizenship and halt an illegal deportation? How many years after the fact might it take for Black Americans who are able to sue to receive legal validation from federal courts for these unconstitutional violations of their rights?
The Trump Administration’s creative cruelty means anti-Blackness in immigration is showing up in ways we have not encountered before and on a scale we have not fathomed before. Take the plight of the home health aide industry, which is one of the largest and fastest-growing occupations in the U.S. with nearly 4 million workers in 2024. Immigrants make up a significant portion of this workforce, with the number of both documented and undocumented immigrants working as home health aides jumping 24% between 2018 and 2013 per the Migration Policy Institute. The demand for home health aides is “bottomless,” as the U.S. population ages and desires to age-in-place grow (along with the growing needs of people with disabilities who also utilize these services). In 2023, almost half of all home health aides were foreign-born, nearly 30% were Black or Latinx, and almost 90% were women. Senior living communities and home health aide companies are reporting immigrants leaving their jobs out of fear of enforcement, and some employers have warned employees on temporary work visas that they may be let go if they lose status. In my own life, my Black immigrant grandmother has benefited from the remarkable care of multiple Black immigrant home health aides. Continued, relentless anti-immigrant activity not only threatens to destabilize the lives and livelihoods of the home health aides who labor here, but it also threatens the futures of the people they care for every day—like my 98-year-old grandmother.
From yet another angle, nonprofit and advocacy organizations that serve immigrants are under direct attack from the Trump Administration’s favorite rabidly anti-immigrant lackeys in Congress. Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri sent a threatening letter to Angelica Salas, Executive Director of CHIRLA, inanely trying to pit blame on the organization for protests in Los Angeles. Earlier the same week, the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability allegedly sent investigatory letters to 200 immigrant organizations, demanding data and information about their activities. I know for a fact that a number of Black immigrant-led or Black immigrant-serving organizations received these letters (like the Haitian Bridge Alliance), which come on the heels of increasing threats against their safety by disgruntled members of the public both online and in-person.
Make no mistake: the Trump Administration’s anti-Blackness knows no bounds. It will stop at nothing to minimize, suppress, and eradicate Black leadership, livelihood, and longevity in the U.S. The few examples I’ve discussed are non-exhaustive. We will see more and more evidence of the ongoing need for racial solidarity between Black Americans and Black immigrants as this Administration continues to destabilize the systems that offered Black people in the U.S. paltry protection to begin with. Although it’s been so from the very start, the second Trump Administration is reinforcing the truism that immigrant justice will always be a Black fight.
