A month after President Joe Biden took office, hundreds of immigrants continue to be deported in the middle of a pandemic to countries struggling with economic and political turmoil.

Many are being deported to Haiti, a country in the midst of an attempted coup. Others were sent to Jamaica, Guatemala and Honduras. According to The Washington Post, “advocates for immigrants tracking the flights say Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expelled approximately 900 Haitians, including dozens of children, in the past two weeks.” 

Immigration officials told the Post that the deportations fall within Biden’s new enforcement priorities to focus on people convicted of serious crimes. But many were also removed under a Trump administration policy that essentially blocked immigration at the border under Title 42 of the U.S. Code, which bans immigration if there is a "serious danger of the introduction of … disease into the United States." Most Haitians in recent days have been deported under Title 42, “drawing concerns that Black migrants are being disproportionately affected.”

For many immigrant advocates, the timing of the deportations is ironic because we’re in the middle of Black History Month. Prism reporter Tina Vásquez spoke to two immigrant rights leaders about the erasure of Black immigrants within the migrant rights movement and the media. Here are two of my favorite quotes from that discussion: 

Patrice Lawrence, UndocuBlack Network: At the end of the day, Biden is responsible because Biden has the power to stop the deportations. He is one of the most powerful men in the world. I understand there are many nuances, but DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) is relatively new. ICE is relatively new. They built these agencies up quickly and they can tear them down quickly, but they’re not going to do that. The oppressor isn’t going to willingly tear down these systems; it’s the job of the oppressed to demand it.

Guerline Jozef, Haitian Bridge Alliance: Our thinking right now is that we have to focus on relief and systems of change. We cannot go back to how it was before. When people say, “Let’s go back to how it was,” they don’t understand that we as Black people don’t have anything to go back to. We have to fight to create something better. Some people have the luxury of this before time or a time that they thought was more normal, but we don’t have that reality. There was no “normal” for us.

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.

OTHER NEWS DEVELOPMENTS WE’RE WATCHING

The U.S. will allow asylum seekers waiting in Mexico into the U.S. In another step toward ending former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which has forced thousands to reside in Mexico while their cases were pending in the U.S. since 2019, the Biden administration announced this month that it will allow about 25,000 asylum seekers with active immigration cases to await their court dates in the U.S. The government has planned to start this Friday by processing up to 300 people a day at three ports of entry at the border. In his first week in office, Biden stopped adding asylum seekers to the Remain in Mexico program, which has forced nearly 69,000 migrants, including children, to wait in cities that the U.S. considers among the most dangerous in the world.

Biden is ending “safe third country” agreements. Launched by the Trump administration, the agreements required asylum-seeking migrants to first claim asylum in another country along their journey to the U.S. border. That means migrants waited in countries that lack the proper resources and infrastructure to help them. And if asylum seekers arrived at the U.S. border before first seeking protection somewhere else, they’re subject to being deported and sent back to the conditions they fled in the first place. The U.S. entered into its first such agreement with Guatemala in 2019. Two other agreements with El Salvador and Honduras were never implemented, according to The Wall Street Journal. “These agreements were never consistent with the minimum standards of humanitarian protection, so it makes sense for the Biden administration to cancel them,” Andrew Selee of the Migration Policy Institute told the Journal. “It remains to be seen what the new architecture of shared responsibility in the region will look like.”
 

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. Migrants waiting for U.S. entry along the Mexican border face freezing conditions inside tents without electricity. (The Dallas Morning News)

As Texans cope with below-freezing temperatures that burst water pipes and left much of the state without power this week, asylum seekers living along the U.S.-Mexico border as a result of the Remain in Mexico policy are facing similar conditions. At a camp in Matamoros, just south of Brownsville, Texas, medical volunteers gave out hot tea and hot chocolate to migrants after their water filtration system froze and gas heaters failed.  

The kicker: The low temperatures have frozen water sources at the camp and the camp has been plagued with electricity outages. A light snow fell on the sprawling camp of tarps and tents and makeshift outdoor grills, where immigrants burn wood to cook and keep warm. “The people are so cold,” said Estuardo Cifuentes, an asylum-seeker who lives outside the camp due to its danger. “There are some heaters, but without electricity, they are of no use.”

2. Anti-immigrant sentiment is undermining vaccine rollouts among undocumented immigrants. (Kaiser Health News) 

Health officials in the South are encountering a “pervasive mistrust” of the government and law enforcement among undocumented immigrants that is hampering vaccination efforts. Complicating matters are Republican lawmakers in those states who supported Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, as well as recent cases of immigration agents staking out clinics. 

The kicker: (Dr. Sharon) Davis was among the medical directors who said the mass vaccination sites many states are using in the rollout – giant tents staffed by uniformed National Guard troops and iPad-toting medical personnel – have spooked immigrant families. “They are asking, ‘What documentation do we have to show at the mass vaccination sites?’ ” said Davis. “Fear of deportation is just huge, and very real.” And not unfounded, advocates noted, coming off four years in which former President Donald Trump sharply curtailed both legal and illegal immigration through mass detention and deportation, travel bans and severely restricting asylum.]

3. The Biden administration is eliminating the phrase “illegal alien” from government communications. (BuzzFeed News)

Tracy Renaud, acting leader of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, issued a memo this week that calls for the end of the terms “illegal alien,” “alien” or “undocumented alien” in internal and external communications. Instead, officials must now use the terms “noncitizen,” “undocumented noncitizen” or “undocumented individual.” The new administration is also proposing that Congress remove the term “alien” from federal immigration law and replace it with “noncitizen.”

The kicker: The planned wording change, recounted in a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News, is the latest flashpoint in a yearslong debate over the way immigrants are described in federal laws and by the agencies that oversee immigration. Axios earlier Tuesday reported on an email to staff about the memo. To immigrants and their advocates, it represents a shift away from a word that has been described as “dehumanizing” for those hoping to make the U.S. their new home, while others believe it’s an unnecessary move that undercuts federal law. The term "alien" is found within U.S. Code and is regularly referenced in the immigration system and in court rulings to describe everyone who is not a U.S. citizen. In recent years, however, the word has been wiped from the California Labor Code and the Library of Congress after advocacy efforts.
 

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– Laura C. Morel