by: Karim Golding
When we talk about over-policing, we often think of traffic stops, stop-and-frisk, no-knock raids, and mass incarceration. But there’s another layer of policing that’s ripping apart Black families, especially in cities like Miami, New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles—immigration enforcement. And if you think this doesn’t affect Black Americans, think again.
Across the U.S., Black immigrants—many from the Caribbean and Africa—are being over-surveilled, arrested, and deported through a system that’s just as racist and carceral as the criminal legal system we’ve been fighting for decades. And the ripple effects are hitting all of us.
Black Immigrants Live in Black Communities:
You may not always know who’s undocumented in your neighborhood. But trust—they live where we live. They go to our schools. They worship in our churches. They raise their kids next door. And when ICE raids a home in Flatbush or detains a father in South L.A., it doesn’t just disappear a “foreigner”—it disappears one of ours.
When Black immigrants are deported, it breaks up Black families. That mother working two jobs. That uncle who just came home and was doing the right thing. That cousin who had a weed charge from 2003 and got picked up by ICE at probation. These are our people. And their absence leaves real holes in our families, in our finances, in our futures.
The Same Over-Policing That Harms Us, Targets Them Harder:
Let’s be clear: Black immigrants aren’t being policed because they’re undocumented. They’re being policed because they’re Black. The NYPD doesn’t ask for your passport before slamming you against a car hood. The same racial profiling that over-polices Black Americans puts Black immigrants at even greater risk—because every stop, ticket, or charge could trigger deportation.
Programs like 287(g)—where local police act like ICE agents—turn ordinary traffic stops into deportation traps. And in places where the police are already stopping Black people at 10 times the rate of whites, the result is clear: Black immigrants are criminalized and deported at wildly disproportionate rates.
Deportation Is an Extension of Mass Incarceration:
Let’s call it what it is: deportation is the second sentence. A Black man finishes a prison bid—and instead of coming home, he’s shackled and handed over to ICE. In cities like Chicago and Newark, this has become a quiet pipeline. And it hits families who’ve already lost loved ones to the prison system with another blow: exile.
This is what crimmigration looks like. It’s not just border walls and refugee camps—it’s Rikers, Fulton County Jail, and LA County Probation. It’s Black men being funneled from jails to ICE detention centers with no second chance.
Why Black Americans Must Lead on This Issue:
Black people in America have always been on the frontlines of fighting state violence—from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration. Crimmigration is part of that same legacy. But too often, immigration has been framed as a “Latino issue” or a “foreign issue.” That erases Black immigrants—and it isolates Black Americans from a fight that deeply affects our communities.
If we want to stop family separation, if we want to build real safety, if we want to end the violence of policing—we can’t ignore how the immigration system is being weaponized against us.
Our Liberation is Bound Together:
This isn’t charity. This is solidarity. The fight against ICE is the same as the fight against the NYPD and the same as the fight against mass incarceration. It’s about ending systems that treat Black life as disposable—whether you were born in Brooklyn or born in Kingston.
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