On papers, belonging, and the right to move freely
How can we make sense of US immigration policy under the Biden Administration
As we watched the Trump Administration officials tear children from the arms of their parents at the US-Mexico border, for many, the horrific conditions inside immigrant detention centers were broadcast into our homes. People locked in cages, small children huddled on thin mats in rooms that look like warehouses - these images swarmed our screens for a few weeks (if that long). Celebrities beseeched their social media followers to donate money and call the administration to change their policy, and it seemed to be working for a while. Because children were involved in such an egregious display of inhumane policy, comparisons were made to internment camps and even the Holocaust. An astute comparison according to those held inside these facilities. When I spoke to women held at the (now closed) Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia following the revelation that detention center staff were conducting forced hysterectomies on the women detained at Irwin, several of the women held there made the comparison to concentration camps.
And with the Trump administration out of office, and the Biden/Harris Administration in power after promising a more humane immigration policy, some were truly shocked to see the unmitigated violence at the border yet again with U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback whipping Haitian asylum seekers as they crossed the border. Over two weeks in September, Border Patrol agents apprehended or expelled nearly thirty thousand migrants, the majority of them Haitian nationals sheltering near Del Rio, Texas.
In the month since those images were seared into our minds, another conversation, though much shorter lived, started up about migration and the US.
How are we to make sense of what is happening at our borders?
Is the Biden Administration actually changing the Trump Administration’s horrifying policies?
As climate crises create more and more unsafe places to live, the legacy of colonization has eviscerated countries of their national resources, and disaster capitalism creates fewer and fewer options for people to sustain themselves and their families in the places they are born, how can we make sense of US policy towards those that arrive here, seeking refuge?
Before getting to those particulars (and we surely will, because we each have calls to make to our elected officials) I can’t help but want to take several steps back. Away from the fraught, and often fake, debates we seem to be embroiled in each time an election season nears. Anti-immigration, white supremacist politicians know exactly which demographic anxiety buttons to push to get the members of their party publicly stressed about the browning of the nation. Sadly, in leadership of the opposing (Democratic) party we don’t often hear unmitigated support for immigrants despite constantly hearing Democrats assert that the the U.S is a singular nation, comprised of immigrants, with equal opportunity for all. Rather we hear some sheepish acknowledgements that not all immigrants are criminals, and that for those, the good ones, our system should work. Sometimes, they don’t even say as much though, and fall right into line with the fear-mongers telling them, “don’t come.”
Why do they keep coming despite knowing the vitriol they will face, both at the border and throughout their lives here should they be so lucky as to be allowed to stay? Who can help us understand why people would leave their own beloved homelands to come to this fraught place?
The way we have organized our world is through a system of nations and borders. And citizenship in one of those nations is supposed to protect our rights. We make a social contract. We follow certain rules, curtailing some of our own freedoms in the process, for safety and protection and to have access to all the things that we need to survive. Ostensibly. Citizens get papers, and with papers, come rights. With papers comes the ability to move about freely and safely. With papers comes belonging. Ostensibly.
In practice, citizenship and immigration are contentious issues everywhere, and particularly in North America and Europe where increased migration (voluntary and forced) is changing demographics, culture, and social and political institutions. Not least for those indigenous people who are the first nations of this land, who are constantly fighting to protect their sovereignty.
In practice, some governments don’t protect all their citizens equally, and some hardly at all. In some cases this is because colonization eviscerated the social, political, and economic structures of the country. In some cases, because climate catastrophe has. In some cases, your government doesn’t believe you have the same rights as others because of your race, gender, ability, sexual orientation or some other fact of your being makes you vulnerable to having your rights disrespected.
According to The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is someone who has fled his or her country “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Most countries in the Western world have implemented elaborate systems of control and exclusion against migrants (immigrants/refugee/aslylees/etc), including border checkpoints, detention facilities, legal processes for papers which allow access to work, health care, education, housing and other social services. All these policies are based on the premise that migrants’ have to prove that they deserve to be here, prove that they are not dangerous, and prove that they are well and truly persecuted in their home countries.
Our baseline criteria are shaped by fear and anxiety. And the criteria are murky at best.
When your country’s economy and social and political structure was ravaged by colonialism, what is the distinction between someone fleeing persecution as a refugee or someone fleeing a devastated economy? Who makes these distinction between immigrant, refugee, and asylum seeker and to what ends? And let’s not forget, many, many Black and brown citizens of this country are treated as threats despite having all the requisite papers. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
In March of 2020, leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic (while simultaneously underplaying it’s severity) the Trump administration began using Title 42 to allow Customs and Border Protection to expel most migrants detained at the border without considering their asylum claims, as usually required by U.S. law. Title 42 is a public health and welfare statute enacted in 1944 that gave the U.S. surgeon general the authority — later transferred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — to determine whether communicable disease in a foreign country poses a serious danger of spreading in the U.S., either by people or property entering the country. If the CDC finds that a disease does pose a threat, it can, with approval from the President, temporarily prohibit them from entering the country.
When the Trump administration implemented Title 42, lawmakers including then-Sen. Kamala Harris called it an unconstitutional “executive power grab.” Far from ending Trump’s public health expulsions, the Biden Administration has broken records in expelling adults, families, and children back to dangerous conditions. President Biden has more than doubled expulsions since coming into office, resulting in nearly a million expulsions from March 2020 to July 2021. Furthermore, what seemed like mere moments after making speeches and asserting outrage at the vile treatment of Haitian asylum seekers, the Biden administration resumed its deportations to Haiti despite the country’s ongoing economic, political, and environmental disasters in the wake of the assassination of their President followed by a devastating earthquake.
Public health experts, including former CDC officials, continue to find no public health rationale for those expulsions and called out the racist premise of presenting migrants as “vectors of disease” - pretty rich coming from a country with all the resources and access to vaccines and a relatively unchecked spread of COVID-19. Despite ongoing litigation from asylum seeking families, the Biden administration has refused to end this mass expulsion policy and has only exempted one group (unaccompanied children) from instant removal - unaccompanied children. As though that is sufficient.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s recent report on deportation and detention, the process is not only inhumane but often arbitrary, “In jail, you get your sentence and you know when you are free, but detention is endless,” said one man who was held in immigrant detention for more than 800 days. In immigration courts, detained people must negotiate a legal labyrinth without lawyers. They have the right to a lawyer, but only at their own expense. Imagine the financial condition of most of the people seeking refuge in the US, and you don’t need a report to tell you that most detained immigrants cannot afford, or even locate, a lawyer while locked away in remote facilities.
Our response to migration is exclusively carceral: either detain in inhumane conditions, or deport back to devastated nations — these seem our only options. Perhaps because when your only tool is a hammer, every Black or brown asylum seeker looks like a nail. This is notable not because detention centers are themselves violations of human rights, but also because we seem to be suffering a labor shortage in the US. We all saw many “immigrants make America great” posters and shirts during election season, but have yet to see the policy to back up the slogan.
Many of the Haitians who camped under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas had made long journeys over the course of many years to arrive at the Southern border of the U.S. Some were inspired to try to enter the United States because they mistakenly assumed that President Biden’s replacement of former President Donald Trump — and the Biden administration’s decision to extend temporary protected status to Haitians already in the country — falsely signaled that the U.S. might be more welcoming to them.
All our policies are based on the premise that migrants’ have to prove that they deserve to be here, prove that they are not dangerous, prove that they are the good ones. American flags go up in front of immigrant households, particularly any in predominately white neighborhoods. We belong here, they say, while waving. Celebrities make Go Fund Me sites when an outrage breaks onto our screens. Politicians tell the stories of their immigrant parents, grandparents, or great grandparents in an effort to sniffle the blow of unmitigated cruelty of bearing witness. Some even go to detention centers and wipe away tears before supporting the polices that use our tax dollars to build them.
The criteria are wrong. Human rights cannot be what they are if they are contingent on having the right papers. How can we adjudicate morality while on stolen and plundered land?
We can’t. Borders are lies. Worse, they are false delusion that some humans have rights because they have the right papers.