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The Working Class Hero
“My heart shivered,” says Martins Akinbode-Busayo, 35, a Nigerian health worker who fled his country in 2015. His government targeted him for helping gay people access HIV treatments.
In 2014, Nigeria passed a law that criminalized not just homosexuality, but also the organizations that support gay people. He applied for asylum in New York last year, and is awaiting the outcome of his application. But he felt despair after Donald Trump’s presidential victory.
“It’s sad news for me!” he remembers thinking. “I couldn’t sleep, I worried about what was going to happen.”
Amaha Kassa is an immigration lawyer and founder of African Communities Together, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of African immigrants. He says he has been addressing anxieties like Akinbode-Busayo experienced many times since the election of Donald Trump.
“African [immigrants] around the country are confused and upset by the rhetoric and the threats,” says Kassa, 43, who leads the group of nearly 2,000 members between New York and Washington, DC. He estimates that several hundred of them are at risk of deportation under a new administration that promised a crackdown, but has said very little about comprehensive immigration reform.
They’re black, nearly half of them are also Muslim and they heard Trump’s campaign promises: He will not tolerate the undocumented and he wants to prevent people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.
“They want to know ‘what does it mean for me, for my family?’” says Kassa.
According to a 2016 study by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a national advocacy organization, and the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the New York University School of Law, black people in America have a higher chance of coming in contact with the criminal justice system, which makes them more susceptible to police violence.
Members of African Communities Together remember the death of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo in New York in 1999. He was mistaken for a serial rapist and shot 41 times by plainclothes officers. More recently, Alfred Olango, who came to the US as a refugee from Uganda, was shot to death near San Diego last year. The officers involved will not be charged with a crime, though his family says they will continue to pursue legal options.
But for African immigrants, these encounters with police also make them more deportable.
Trump has begun to sign executive orders — instructions for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — that codify this risk. In one order, which he signed on Wednesday, he asked the agencies to focus on the deportation of undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes. But he also prioritized those who “have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved” or “have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.”
No conviction necessary.
For black African immigrants, any encounter with the police then becomes a chance for deportation. It's an expansion of the kinds of deportations that took place under the Obama administration and earlier. From 2003 to 2015, while black immigrants represent only 5.4 percent of the undocumented population, they made up 10.6 percent of all newcomers in removal proceedings, according to the report by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the Immigrant Rights Clinic.
“The first folks to be targeted by some of [Trump’s] proposals are people who had contact with the criminal justice system,” says Kassa. “Are immigrants going to face deportation, often to countries they barely know, for relatively minor offenses, like jumping turnstiles on the train?”
“We fear that our families will experience violence and forced separation at a scale that's unimaginable,” says Carl Lipscomb, a programs manager at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, in an email.
Black and Muslim, some African immigrants feel the brunt of Trump’s immigration plans
In 2014, Nigeria passed a law that criminalized not just homosexuality, but also the organizations that support gay people. He applied for asylum in New York last year, and is awaiting the outcome of his application. But he felt despair after Donald Trump’s presidential victory.
“It’s sad news for me!” he remembers thinking. “I couldn’t sleep, I worried about what was going to happen.”
Amaha Kassa is an immigration lawyer and founder of African Communities Together, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of African immigrants. He says he has been addressing anxieties like Akinbode-Busayo experienced many times since the election of Donald Trump.
“African [immigrants] around the country are confused and upset by the rhetoric and the threats,” says Kassa, 43, who leads the group of nearly 2,000 members between New York and Washington, DC. He estimates that several hundred of them are at risk of deportation under a new administration that promised a crackdown, but has said very little about comprehensive immigration reform.
They’re black, nearly half of them are also Muslim and they heard Trump’s campaign promises: He will not tolerate the undocumented and he wants to prevent people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.
“They want to know ‘what does it mean for me, for my family?’” says Kassa.
According to a 2016 study by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a national advocacy organization, and the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the New York University School of Law, black people in America have a higher chance of coming in contact with the criminal justice system, which makes them more susceptible to police violence.
Members of African Communities Together remember the death of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo in New York in 1999. He was mistaken for a serial rapist and shot 41 times by plainclothes officers. More recently, Alfred Olango, who came to the US as a refugee from Uganda, was shot to death near San Diego last year. The officers involved will not be charged with a crime, though his family says they will continue to pursue legal options.
But for African immigrants, these encounters with police also make them more deportable.
Trump has begun to sign executive orders — instructions for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — that codify this risk. In one order, which he signed on Wednesday, he asked the agencies to focus on the deportation of undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes. But he also prioritized those who “have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved” or “have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.”
No conviction necessary.
For black African immigrants, any encounter with the police then becomes a chance for deportation. It's an expansion of the kinds of deportations that took place under the Obama administration and earlier. From 2003 to 2015, while black immigrants represent only 5.4 percent of the undocumented population, they made up 10.6 percent of all newcomers in removal proceedings, according to the report by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the Immigrant Rights Clinic.
“The first folks to be targeted by some of [Trump’s] proposals are people who had contact with the criminal justice system,” says Kassa. “Are immigrants going to face deportation, often to countries they barely know, for relatively minor offenses, like jumping turnstiles on the train?”
“We fear that our families will experience violence and forced separation at a scale that's unimaginable,” says Carl Lipscomb, a programs manager at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, in an email.
Black and Muslim, some African immigrants feel the brunt of Trump’s immigration plans