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Amid ICE Sweeps and Travel Bans, Here's How to Support Black Immigrants in Atlanta
While non-Black Latino immigrants became the focus of many of the protests held in cities across the country in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions this week, Atlanta's Black immigrant community — the fourth largest in the country — is refusing to take a back seat.
Pew Research estimates around 200,000 Black immigrants, mostly from Jamaica, Haiti, and Nigeria, call metro Atlanta home. Black immigrants often find themselves simultaneously ignored and under a spotlight because of how racialized anti-immigrant political sentiment has become.
Read More: Atlanta Immigration Protests Draws Hundreds Amid Tear Gas and Fireworks
Black immigrants, who may be Latin, Caribbean, or African, must navigate a specific set of challenges with how both race and immigration status impact their daily lives. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration works to advocate for and empower immigrants from across the African diaspora. In addition to local chapters in Georgia, California, New York, and Arizona, BAJI's legal resources and clinics are available virtually for anyone in need.
Their legal and policy staff provide regular breakdowns of President Donald Trump's latest immigration-related executive orders and host a bi-weekly asylum support webinar.
Local chapters are run by BAJIs staff organizers who host events and training relevant to the community. Atlanta chapter organizers recently held a workshop at the Congolese Community of Atlanta's general assembly meeting on the public charge rule. A policy implemented by the Department of Homeland Security in 2022 that disqualifies an immigrant from obtaining a green card if it is deemed they are likely to become dependent on public benefits in the future.
Capital B Atlanta spoke with Nana Gyamfi, BAJI's executive director, about the current political climate and the intersection of Black and immigrant identity.
Nana Gyamfi: I think Black immigrants need to be aware that our blackness adds another very critical level to the type of profiling that we are subjected to. Even in diverse places like Atlanta, New York, or Chicago, we are still being left out of conversations on the impact of the federal immigration crackdown.
What we know from the data, as well as anecdotal experiences, is that most law enforcement interactions with Black immigrants begin as racial profiling that then goes down another road when the officer hears an accent or realizes there is a language barrier. As a result, Black migrants are detained, deported and held in solitary confinement at a disproportionately higher rate.
One example is the new travel ban, where eight out of 12 banned countries — and three out of the seven partially banned countries — are Black or African. That doesn't even include banned countries with large Black populations, like Cuba and Venezuela. So even though most people are focused on the Muslim element, the face of the ban is really a Black face.
Immigrant folks [need to be] really clear about what their rights are and exercise those rights. Whether they are green card holders, have temporary protective status, if they're an international student, on a work visa, or even undocumented. They have basic rights that are afforded by the Constitution of the United States. It's really important that they know, for example, not to sign anything.
There are situations where an immigrant is presented with a document and told, 'If you want to leave, if you want to see your kids, if you want to get back to your spouse, if you want to be able to work, then you need to sign.' Law enforcement will tell them, 'If you sign this, we'll let you go, things will be easier for you.'
This happens particularly to Black immigrants who don't speak English as a first language or at all. People have unknowingly signed voluntary deportation papers, or an acknowledgement that they are someone who they aren't without knowing. It's really important that people understand the right to remain silent is not just verbal, it is also written. Make it clear that you don't want to talk and that you're not going to sign anything.
Read More: Black Immigrants in Atlanta Mobilize Amid Rising Deportation Threats
Ask for an attorney. Whether you have one or not, you're not entitled to one, but you are entitled to ask for one. Don't consent to any searches or produce any documents. Don't do anything that can be perceived as you going along with providing information, because you have a right not to.
No, immigrants have the same rights across the board. The difference in a sanctuary city is that local law enforcement is not supposed to act as an extension of immigration enforcement.
But what we are seeing now in sanctuary cities like Los Angeles is that local law enforcement may not be acting like ICE, but they are certainly playing backup to ICE and other federal agents that are engaged in immigration enforcement.
In Georgia, local law enforcement is directly engaged in immigration enforcement. But the rights of immigrants haven't changed.
This piece is so important for people like me, who have immigrant parents but were born here and have U.S. citizenship, which gives us the capacity to move in a more privileged way. It's really important for us to also know those rights and to help to remind folks that we see being questioned or detained. In Atlanta metro, that isn't just ICE, but also includes local law enforcement that has been contracted to work alongside them.
Read More: Black Immigrants in Atlanta Face New Risks As Trump Signs Laken Riley Act
Immigration Court is also public, so people can go down there and support the people who are doing what they're supposed to do and showing up for their court dates.
People who are employers, [and] heads of churches, schools, and hospitals, can also do their part to protect the human rights and dignity of immigrants as they are in those spaces. It doesn't matter that this administration has declared those places are no longer protected, because the protection comes from us as a community.
The post Amid ICE Sweeps and Travel Bans, Here's How to Support Black Immigrants in Atlanta appeared first on Capital B News - Atlanta.
