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An excerpt of ColorLines magazine’s special report on how the clampdown on immigration is tearing families apart.
One early morning five years ago, Calvin James walked outside the Jersey City apartment, where his girlfriend and 6-year-old son slept, to put the trash on the street for pickup.
As soon as James, then 45, walked outside, he was greeted by four people jumping out of a black SUV. Dressed in uniforms with “ICE” printed on the back, they rushed him and demanded he confirm his name, then handcuffed and pulled James into the back of the SUV.
James spent four months in immigration detention, first in New Jersey and then in Louisiana for an old conviction for selling pot. Then, he was put on a plane and deported to Jamaica, where he had not been since he was 12 years old.
ColorLines magazine went on the road tracing James’ journey from New York to Jamaica to investigate the collateral effects of deportation on immigrant communities. Harsh immigration policy, compounded by systemic racial inequities built into the criminal justice system, are not thwarting terrorists or making our country a whole lot safer. But the laws are doing a great job of breaking up another entity: families of color.
Immigrants face de facto double jeopardy. Indeed, double punishment is now all but guaranteed in the legal landscape for non-citizens. When the Illegal Immigration Reform and Individual Responsibility Act was passed in 1996, it changed immigration policy so that non-citizens—even legal residents—who were caught in the criminal justice system for the most minor crimes became vulnerable to deportation.
And the law was applied retroactively, so a conviction from decades earlier can trigger deportation today. After their criminal cases end, immigrants are subject to civil procedures of immigration courts. Deportation follows incarceration.
Earlier this month, Obama administration officials announced plans to reform immigrant detention policy, ostensibly to make improvements to the broken system. The New York Times reported on the detention framework’s serious flaws, namely that people who have committed no crime are being swept up into the system and locked away in detention.
Meanwhile President Obama is bolstering “Secure Communities,” which puts immigration agents in local jails, along with the 287(g) local enforcement program, a key component of President Bush’s immigration program, even as it comes under fire for widespread abuses.
Five years since his deportation, today, James lives alone in a two-room apartment in the mountains outside Montego Bay and works two jobs as a security guard and driver.
Back in New York, his girlfriend and son were evicted from their Jersey City apartment three years after James was deported, after she lost her job. They spent time on friends’ couches and now live in a shelter in Harlem. James’ partner, Kathy, says they definitely would not have been homeless if had he remained. They might even have a home of their own.
Even though it’s been five years since James was deported, time hasn’t seemed to ease the pain of separation.
“I sit here sometimes, and, man, I wish I could put them on the plane and get them down here,” James says, turning over a framed picture of Kathy and their son, Josh. “It’s all kind of heartbreaking, you know.”
What happened to this family is no coincidence. Unfair racial inequities in the criminal justice system including harsh sentencing laws and racial profiling mean blacks and Latinos are more likely to be incarcerated, in large part, for drug convictions. They are more likely to be deported as a result.
According to research by Tanya Golash-Boza, professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, “This disparity cannot be explained simply by higher rates of crime among Jamaican populations,” she says. “Blacks and Latinos are seen as criminals by the larger culture. Other immigrants are not.”
Meanwhile, the Schiro report commissioned by Homeland Security reveals more than half of immigrants who get detained presumably for having committed a crime in fact had no criminal convictions. Nearly two-thirds of those picked up by local police under 287(g) had committed no crime. Thus even immigrants of color with no convictions are at risk of detention and deportation as a result of harsh enforcement policies.
There is some reason to be hopeful that the Obama administration moves to reform immigration detention and local law enforcement officials choosing to drop participation in 287(g). But there are valid reasons to be concerned about whether proposed changes to the detention system will help immigrants or just mean a more streamlined transition from jail to detention to exile.
As long as immigration laws continue to criminalize non-citizens, it will be immigrants of color who bear the heaviest weight of enforcement. In the context of a criminal justice system that punishes blacks for being black, an immigration policy focused on “criminal aliens” will only mean more black parents get deported, and more families get torn apart.
A just immigration policy must do better.
Julianne Hing is co-editor of the ColorLines magazine blog, RaceWire, and assistant editor of ColorLines magazine. Seth Wessler is a writer and Research Associate with Applied Research Center. They co-authored a ColorLines magazine investigative series on families torn apart by deportation from New York to Jamaica. To read the rest of the Torn Apart article series and multimedia project, visit ColorLines.
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Ouch ! Another stinging rebuke from a pseudo intellectual. How ever will I recover? Lordy! Lordy! What of my self esteem !
The best thing you can do for you and your "cause" is to take your head out of your a**.
you did not finish my quote . I stated that we feel a kinship with our brothers and sisters who are currently struggling. What I meant was that your people dont feel one with say the West Virginian appalachian whites that are struggling. I beleive that it your people who coined the term "white trash"
Black people who have gained educational and financial sucess cannot afford to look down on his/her less fortunate kind because we never know when the day minute or hour we will be thrust into or back into poverty.
To you statement The fact that you will not let me have your dream is ok...I have my own.
The fact that your dream has support from every facet of American life is why i suggest to the targeted immigrant not to worry as the cards were stacked in the first place.
My bad. Carry on.
"Bag-of-rocks" dumb. Seriously.
It's simple. DON'T BREAK THE LAW.
If you break the law by drunk driving, "your kids pay" when you're in jail.
If you break the law by stealing from work or do something else that gets you fired, "your kids pay" when you have less money.
If you break the law, break into my home country, defraud our system, steal money from the public programs designed for those who really need help, engage in identity theft, and cause us all sorts of problems, guess what? "Your kids pay" when we send your sorry criminal butt home.
End of story. They get NO sympathy from those of us who believe in playing by the rules.
Obam was chosen as President is that the People were tired of Bush. Their was some media inducement but for the most part W blew the last 2 years of his presidency by not being vocal and answereing his critics promptly. Obama is a dynamic speaker as a counter to Bush's fumbling style, he pushed all the right buttons and he won. I do not know of a single person who promoted Obama based on his half breed status.
I do not argue with you on the subject of black success, I don't understand your comment of "unlike your people,we feel a kinship...." People of all races feel kinship with their ancestors! English, Irish , French, Polish, Mexican have built in networks that protect and nurture those of like heritage. I don't understand the comment.
My question to you as I queried "the end of the struggle" was as I have admitted rhetorical. The struggle will always be their based on uneven life experiences. The white Appalachian family has no reference point with the highly educated black graduate of Howard University. Or with the Harvard graduate that was admitted using a quota system. Racism and prejudice is personal and just as destructive to all victims.
The fact that you will not let me have your dream is ok...I have my own.
It's Voodoo that you do, do! The double talk you eschew evokes comparison with the Great Ones; Al Sharpton, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters, Rodney King. OJ Simpson, Jimmy Carter, Barbara Striesand, George Clooney and a litany of liberal pop thinkers.
We come from different planets and arrive at conclusions using different skill sets and life experiences...as does the entire world. That does not prove prejudice it merely confirms ignorance we have of each other.
Your insistence that I am somehow plagarizing your brilliant retorts is childish.
The thread on this site is about profiling blacks as illegal and marking them for deportation without regard to family destruction. The issue is the oriignal illegal act that resulted in the neccessity for deportation, It is unfortunate that the soveriegn is being held responsible for the aftermath. Many countries would not let this information out to the press for publication. Our benevolence will be our downfall.
Were using the name of Jesus Christ as frustrated barb or an illiterate exclamation to me? Were you mocking Christ? Why not; "for Buddha's sake" or "for Allahs sake" . Do you have a prejudice against Christians? Did a Christian own you or your family at some time in history? Perhaps Christians burned a cross on your lawn! Did a Christian place you in jail? Are some of your best friends Christian? Do you encourage "hook ups" with Christians?
As closely and intensely as your people watch us ... We watch you as well. We know that the only reason that Obama was chosen as the ideal Presidential candidate by whites was that on the surface he has no ties to the American Slave experience that is if his mother doesnt have black ancesters.
We have millions of success stories in this country. Obama is only one of them. Among people like Michelle Obama with American slave ancesters.
But unlike your race, we still feel a kinship with our brothers and sisters who have not been so fortunate as we all are battling the racist ideas of your people. So when you seek an end to this ugly struggle you only need to ask your own kind
Of course none of this has anything to do with my statement that the American dream is white. I would imagine if an artist were to paint one picture of the American dream it would be Norman Rockwell like with little to no black people. Thank God that I have my own dreams.... and you cant have any of it
...is it within your abilities to construct a retort that doesn't boil down to "I know you are but what am I"??? Lack much original thought???
I just remembered a major part of the now-missing comments was me asking whether it's being a conservative that drains one's creative brain activity or is it just that those who already lack independent original thought simply gravitate towards that party?
Let me guess... the answer is going to be some form of reversal of the original question, right? Jesus Christ, man!
We do agree on something...I am not holding my breath waiting for you to make sense either.