Preview: From Welcome, To Deportation
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After Modou won his release from U.S. immigration jail, his uncle sent him a plane ticket confirmation to come to Ohio. Modou told Demba Ndiath, Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s Advocacy Director: “It didn’t feel like hiding. It felt organized — like they expected me to be here.”
And “they” did. The U.S. government under the Biden administration recognized that people seeking asylum at a U.S. border are allowed to apply for it, under U.S. and international law. In fact, they aren’t even allowed to apply for asylum from their native countries. This is part of the confusing, often-contradictory U.S. immigration system we have today.
Ndiath wrote in his forthcoming book, From Welcome To Deportation: A Story of Black Migrants Who Crossed the U.S.-Mexico Border, that today’s immigration system is “designed around Cold War refugee paradigms struggling to address contemporary migration driven by inequality, environmental change, and racialized repression.” He continued:
Asylum law, in theory, is neutral. In practice, its application reflects enforcement priorities that change based on who occupies the White House. Immigration legal cases can take years to resolve and span various presidential administrations, subjecting migrants to differing policies within the lifetime of one individual case…. What migrants encounter is not a neutral system, but one structured to test endurance. Their movement is treated not as a response to global inequality, repression, and climate collapse, but as a problem to be deterred.
This is the crux of his argument, and the understanding U.S. policymakers need if they are going to make any meaningful improvements. Interviewing immigrants, attorneys, policy experts, and even a former immigration judge for his book, Ndiath layered multiple perspectives that drew the same conclusion: our immigration court system was designed to pretend justice, not enforce it. Ndiath wrote:
For many West African migrants, this reality is devastating. They arrive believing that cooperation and honesty will lead to protection. They receive parole documents, identification numbers, and sometimes work authorization. What they are rarely told is that parole is temporary and revocable; work permits can expire before cases are heard; and their fate will be decided in an adversarial system designed to offer the illusion of justice without actual understanding.
From Welcome To Deportation does more than diagnose problems and document pain. It advances solutions; improvements to today’s immigration system like guaranteed legal representation for people with cases in civil immigration court; a truly independent immigration judiciary, rather than one fully controlled by the Executive Branch; and an end to immigration jail. Wrote Ndiath: “Detention is officially justified as a means of ensuring appearance at hearings. In practice, it functions as a mechanism of pressure and exhaustion.”
In OIA’s groundbreaking research series “Behind Closed Doors: Black Migrants and the Hidden Injustices of U.S. Immigration Courts,” immigration lawyers and people who sought asylum in the U.S. offer another change: a simpler system. “Just give us a chance to explain ourselves and to say why we came here, what we want to do in here. That's it,” said Aicha, a mother of four. They say the U.S. immigration system should adopt a “whole person” standard, rather than focusing only on the negative.
For example, the application for lawful permanent residency asks eighty-nine questions to determine whether someone is eligible for a green card. The share of the application devoted to “reasons to deny” is grossly disproportionate to the “reasons to grant.” Only one question asks about positive attributes: the applicant’s “certifications, licenses, and skills.” The remaining eighty-eight questions focus on what the government considers negative conduct, such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, participating in the Holocaust, prostitution, and polygamy.
This is because laws were written based on stereotypes about immigration. They were written to exclude and diminish immigrants’ rights, not embrace migration as an act of courage that strengthens the receiving communities. From Welcome To Deportation is about people who are trying to understand and follow the law; who believed the version of the fair and democratic United States we sold to the world, and found out that this version of the U.S. isn’t true — yet.
They don’t deserve the names the current President calls them. They don’t understand why they are being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), when they have work permits and pending asylum cases. When they are deported, they feel shame at having let down their family and towns, who expected them to do great things. In his poem “Dark Journey,” about the dangerous “bottom route” many West African people are forced to take to the United States, Souleye Ball put it this way: “I’d rather die and be buried in my homeland, than return empty-handed and become a laughingstock.”
Overall, From Welcome To Deportation highlights the strength and resiliency of people we should be honored to welcome to the United States. It will soon be available for purchase on the Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s Bookshop.org page and highlighted at “Ohio Is My Second Country,” OIA’s event at the Columbus Arts Festival in June.
Watch the preview of Ndiath’s book and download the accompanying presentation.
