Janine Jackson interviewed the Black Alliance for Just Immigration’s Nekessa Opoti about Haitian refugees for the November 5, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
New York Times (9/21/21)
Janine Jackson: People around the world were appalled to see pictures of US Border Patrol officers on horseback wielding reins like whips in the effort to corral and capture Haitian refugees along the Rio Grande. So alarming was the imagery that outlets like the New York Times took pains to clarify that there was no evidence that Border Patrol had actually whipped anyone.
That rather encapsulates corporate media coverage of Haitian asylum seekers and the treatment they receive, so inhumane that not one, but two officials have resigned over it. It’s a sort of liberal tut-tutting that not only fails to challenge US policy, but that tacitly sanctions its harms and their racist rationales with inattention.
Advocates, meanwhile, call for immigration policy that is rooted in human rights and dignity. Nekessa Opoti is communications director at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. She joins us now by phone from Los Angeles. Welcome to CounterSpin, Nekessa Opoti.
Nekessa Opoti: Thank you so much for having me.
JJ: Let’s leap right into why so many Haitians are being expelled from the US without an opportunity to present a case for asylum, and talk about Title 42, this public health services law. Because Homeland Security Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas has stated of the expulsions of Haitians, “We are doing this out of a public health need. It is not an immigration policy. It is not an immigration policy that we would embrace.” That’s a pretty confusing statement. Does that make sense to you?
Nekessa Opoti: “Processing people and allowing them to come into the country is the best public health policy.”
NO: No, it does not. And, in fact, we would argue that Title 42, because of its nature of sending people back, the images that people saw of Haitians—and it’s not actually just Haitians, Haitians and other Black asylum seekers—under a bridge in Texas, the camps that you see outside at the border between Mexico and the US: Those are the unsafe conditions. Processing people and allowing them to come into the country is the best public health policy.
JJ: You wonder how forcing people to live under bridges would be more sanitary.
NO: Right.
JJ: And then, also, Haitians, many of whom are not coming from Haiti right now, but have been traveling through South and Central America for years, they aren’t any more likely to have Covid-19 than any other people who cross the border, right? Or than any other refugees, like, say, Afghans, who are being rightfully accepted right now. So it seems like an exception.
NO: Right. And I’m glad you bring that up, because think about it. The US, at the moment, doesn’t have ways in which it screens people who are coming in from other parts of the country, whether it’s tourists or whoever else is traveling, business people. So not only is this measure anti-Black, it is also very, very classist.
Title 42 disproportionately impacts Black asylum seekers. But it also impacts other asylum seekers. So these are the most vulnerable of any population of people who are seeking, for whatever reason, migrating to the US, because they’re desperate. Because no one leaves their home and crosses through multiple countries and the jungle for fun, right? It is very clear that these people are in crisis. And these are the very same people that the US government has decided to turn away, and expose them to even further harm and violence.
BAJI (1/21)
There is a report that BAJI did at the beginning of the year called There Is a Target on Us. And it looks at the condition of Black migrants, mostly asylum seekers, but Black migrants in general, and violence of their experience at the border on their way into the US and in Mexico, the incarceration rate, the rape of women and children, and the robberies, the exposure to the elements. And so it is very, very clear, the anti-Blackness of the US is very well-known. First, historically, we have known the treatment of Black people in this country is extending to Haitians and other Black asylum seekers and migrants.
JJ: Maybe it’s quaint to contrast politicians’ actions with their promises. But Joe Biden did explicitly say that he would reverse Trump policy on Title 42, didn’t he, when he was running for office?
NO: He did. He did. And, in fact, not just his promise, but there is a video of Vice President Kamala Harris criticizing the Trump administration for using Title 42 and turning people around. She specifically talks about how it’s inhumane, and yet here she is, part of an administration that is doing the very same thing.
JJ: And, in fact, when a federal judge said that Title 42 should not be carried out, the Biden administration appealed that decision. So they’re not just kind of not paying attention to it, they actually are doubling down, in a way, on it.
NO: They are. They are. In the introduction, you talk about liberal politics. I think this is one of the dangers of liberals, is because we’ve spent so much time attacking or critiquing conservative governments—Trump, for example, or Bush before him—and then when it comes to a Democrat and a liberal, there is very little critique and pushback. And yet Democrats continue to hold the status quo. There are some ways in which they do things a little bit better, obviously, than conservatives, but they will uphold white supremacy. They will uphold the nation state.
And the idea that Hillary Clinton, famously saying, when she was secretary of state, did tell migrants who were fleeing not to come to the US. She blamed mothers for the children migrant crisis that we were having at the time. And the cruelty of someone like that, who is apparently a feminist, apparently better than a conservative, it’s sort of the same politics that is continuing with the Biden administration, that their migration policies are somehow more benevolent than that of a conservative, and yet the impact is the same. And particularly for Black folks, we see that we doubly suffer under any of these policies.
American Prospect (10/30/21)
JJ: In the American Prospect, Ella Fanger had a good report outlining some of that disparate treatment, including that when they can get a hearing, Black immigrants are believed less often when they claim credible fear of returning to their countries, when they claim threats to life or freedom. And she pointed out that immigration judges are usually white, and have served as prosecutors or ICE officials. So what BAJI’s work and that of others is saying, we don’t just have bad immigration policy—there are particular special problems that confront Black immigrants in particular, it sounds like you’re saying.
NO: Mmhm, yes.
JJ: Black Alliance for Just Immigration, along with other racial justice and civil rights organizations, you’ve sent public letters and made statements, to the White House and to Homeland Security, that say their stated commitment to racial equity has to extend to the treatment of immigrants. And I just wonder, what are some of the changes to policy that you’re calling for, that you would like to see?
NO: Yeah, thank you for that question. So there is a whole list of things. At the top of the list is for the folks who are at the border, granting them humanitarian parole. Humanitarian parole allows them to come into the US, find shelter, housing, and their organizations and family members that can accommodate that, and allows them a chance to apply for asylum. As you know, there’s a backlog in all sorts of things migration-related. That’s the top of the asks that we have. Other things include creating a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented folks.
JJ: Mmhm.
NO: And that, also, is an ask that we have of the administration. And there are folks who have been unjustly deported, not that any deportation is just, but there is also a demand that for those folks, that they should also be allowed to return to the US and be reunited with their families.
The biggest thing that we have—BAJI works at the intersection of race and immigration—is the impact of the criminal justice system on Black migrants. And that we know that, for example, 76% of Black migrants who are in detention have some form of criminal record. We also know that the criminal justice system is not just. And so we know of people who have been imprisoned, and then as soon as they get out of prison, they’re turned over to ICE, and then they’re detained, oftentimes indefinitely, oftentimes for many, many years.
And then, finally—well, there’s more, but another one that I’d like to highlight is, as the country grapples with criminal justice reform, that Black migrants must be included in that conversation, just because of what I would say the sum of the things that we face.
JJ: Absolutely.
Finally, if you have any thoughts on this, I know that you are also a journalist. I just wonder if there’s anything that you would like to see more of or less of in media coverage of the struggle of Haitians seeking asylum?
NO: I’m really glad that you asked this question, because narrative does impact policy, and it impacts how people see themselves in the world. One of the biggest catastrophes, for example, for the DACA program is that DACA was billed as, obviously, an immigration reprieve that was for any undocumented immigrant that fit into the specific criteria. What happened is, because it was specifically talked about as Latinx reprieve, a lot of Black immigrants did not know that they qualified for it. And so this is part of the danger of erasing Black migrants out of public discourse.
And the disappointing thing is just that, all Black people in this country, is that we are often left out of almost every conversation, and media coverage erases Black migrants. So now we know that, for example, this recent crisis with Haitians, everyone covered it. And then everyone has now disappeared.
There’s other issues that need to be talked about. There has been very little press about some of the things that I have uplifted in this call, and yet this data exists, these stories exist, these anecdotes exist, the research exists. It’s not just BAJI that has done this research. And yet, over and over again, the media willfully ignore these stories.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Nekessa Opoti of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. You can find their work online at BAJI.org. Thank you so much, Nekessa Opoti, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
NO: Thank you so much for having me.
The post ‘The Anti-Blackness of the US Is Extending to Black Asylum Seekers’ appeared first on FAIR.
This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.
Janine Jackson | Radio Free (2021-11-12T23:29:14+00:00) ‘The Anti-Blackness of the US Is Extending to Black Asylum Seekers’. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/12/the-anti-blackness-of-the-us-is-extending-to-black-asylum-seekers/
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