Lenin Nolly/Sipa USA via AP Images
Participants in the ‘Take Action for All of Us’ rally on the National Mall call on President Biden to support immigration reform legislation, January 27, 2021, in Washington.
The deportation machine polished and perfected under President Trump appears to be running without a hitch under President Biden. After a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas quickly blocked the Biden administration’s attempted 100-day deportation moratorium, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began carrying out business as usual.
Last week, ICE carried out 21 removal flights to six different countries. This is virtually the same as the weekly average over the previous three months under Trump, according to Witness at the Border, a volunteer group that monitors deportation flight data (ICE rarely if ever releases deportation information on its own).
ICE has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Though the vast majority of deportation flights are to Mexico or Central America, February has seen a major uptick in deportation flights to Haiti. Witness at the Border reports 11 likely deportation flights to Haiti so far in February, up from a monthly average of around two. In October 2020, there were 12 deportation flights to Haiti.
“Every single day, since February 1, they have had scheduled deportations to Haiti, to Jamaica, to Cameroon, to Angola, and to the [Democratic Republic of the Congo],” said Guerline Jozef, president of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. “Close to 300 people were deported to Haiti [on February 11], including infants and babies as young as one month old, pregnant women who are 36 weeks pregnant.”
At least 72 Haitians, including babies and children, were deported last week. The week prior, ICE deported New York resident Paul Pierrilus, who is not a Haitian national, to Haiti. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) successfully stopped Pierrilus’s deportation before ICE eventually succeeded.
Haiti is in the midst of a constitutional crisis, Jozef said on a Friday press call, and sending migrants back puts them in danger. The current dispute in the country centers on whether the Haitian president’s term ended last week or if he has another year.
Biden has repeatedly said that he wants his administration to govern with racial equity in mind, but advocates wonder when this will extend to immigration.
A scheduled deportation flight to Cameroon on February 3 was unexpectedly halted after advocates and members of Congress created a furor around the flight, which they said would send asylum seekers to their death. ICE later told the Prospect in a statement that the flight was canceled because of allegations of misconduct and abuse of immigrants in ICE custody.
The exception is an example of what advocates say Biden could be doing with all deportations. The president has ultimate authority over how agencies in the executive branch enforce the law, and advocates explain that there are many reasons the administration can give to justify stopped deportation flights even without contradicting the judge’s injunction.
Tom Cartwright, a Witness at the Border volunteer flight tracker, said he thinks many of the deportations during the pandemic are Title 42 expulsions, which would indicate recent arrivals. Title 42 is an order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), first introduced in March 2020, blocking migration at the border under the pretense of public health during the pandemic. At least 400,000 people have been expelled since the order’s introduction. Witness at the Border’s latest report indicates that people have been removed on ICE air flights under regular deportation orders and expelled under Title 42 on the same flight, without distinction.
The Title 42 order was implemented under the guise of stopping the spread of COVID-19, but it has not curtailed the travel of Americans abroad. Millions of people have crossed the border during the pandemic with little to no screening. Public-health experts decried the order as a “pretext to ban asylum seekers and others seeking protection at the border” in a recent letter calling on the Biden administration to rescind the order.
Advocates also say that Title 42 expulsions violate international laws that prevent “refoulement,” or the sending of asylum seekers back to where they might be persecuted or killed.
Biden has begun to mold immigration policy according to his goals. He brought back Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Liberians, which allows migrants to stay in the United States temporarily without fear of deportation. Biden has also suspended the so-called safe third country agreements that Trump forced onto Central American countries, which required asylum seekers to seek asylum in the first “safe” country through which they transited. Their effect was to deny asylum seekers access to the American asylum system.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration has left Title 42 untouched, blocking thousands of people from accessing the asylum and immigration systems in the U.S.
On a press call Friday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said, “What we’ve seen with Black immigrants is that we are more likely to be detained, more likely to be deported, and less likely to be granted asylum.”
“ICE has become a rogue entity,” Omar added. “This is exactly why I’ve been saying for years that we need to abolish ICE, and I will continue to say it and continue to work towards making that a reality.”
