Black Children Are Facing the Realities of Deportations, Too

By: Ruth Jean-Marie

Before I left the United States for London, I wrote a number of educational fact sheets and letters to families. Some were for work and others were for community members to share as they saw fit.  I urged school administrators to prepare for the possibility that some of their students or their parents would soon face deportation, and to pay closer attention to the ways fear and uncertainty might already be disrupting the lives of students in their classrooms. I pleaded with them to share some tips. Write phone numbers down on paper. Your phones may be confiscated by ICE. Identify community members who would be willing to house your children. Remove your name from property and bank accounts and put them in the names of people you trust.  

I made it my literal and purpose-driven work to provide accurate resources about where to find help. At the charter school I worked at, I brought it to the principal’s attention. In my personal life, I posted it to my social media stories. Mostly, it included communication that there is not much that we could do. It felt like introducing my people to hospice en masse. Here, be comfortable while we await the inevitable.

Deportation and state-enforced family separation are nothing new, but the administration’s open disdain for the communities it targets, along with its willingness to display arrests and deportations on social media, adds another dimension to an already devastating practice.

Before I left the United States, I went to luncheons and had conversations where I was confronted with a reality I knew conceptually, but I was forced to reckon with emotionally. It included websites about where to find lawyers. It included anecdotes about densely populated neighborhoods in Brooklyn being scarce. It included stories centering fear.

The U.S. president has been clear about his position on immigrants, namely immigrants who come from countries he deems undesirable. Both Haitians and Syrians have caught his ire over the near decade since he was caught on a hot mic calling countries in Africa, Haiti and El Salvador shitholes. During the most recent presidential election, his vice president accused Haitians of eating household pets, a falsity. His administration has been consistent.

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Historically, there were barrel children–children who were left in the Caribbean while one or both parents voyaged to the United States to work. The separation was deemed necessary as opportunities to make money rested in the United States. Decisions had to be made between employment and family life. The children, on the other hand, note feeling abandoned and still note having strained relationships with their parents.

The phenomenon of ‘barrel children’ has caused trauma and, for the children left behind, a divorce from traditional familial ties. The nurturance they would have received from their birth parents exists over a sea. The Trump administration’s decision to undermine Temporary Protected Status (TPS) means that same nurturance, that consistency, that routine that many parents provided will be snatched from the children who were benefitting from it. TPS, an immigration relief program that was initially established in 1990, provides reprieve for immigrants from countries deemed unsafe. These children, who are American citizens, now face separation from their parents, a twisted reversal of the barrel children practice.

The decision to end Temporary Protected Status under the guise of national security has been subverted by Trump’s comments about Haitians, Mexicans, El Salvadorans and more. This presents something else: state-forced transnational parenting and the effects thereof. 

Dr. Kerri-Ann Smith, First Full Black Professor in the English department at Queensborough Community College, wrote her dissertation on West Indian migration to New York. We spoke via text message, and she had this to say, “children will suffer a great deal of trauma from the forced separation. It’s layered because this is home for the children and where their parents are being sent is probably foreign to them so they might not have much interest in reunification there.” She continued, “The psychology of forced separation is one that has been studied for generations. The best example I can think about was forced separation during slavery, which we know has had long-term effects on Black peoples globally for generations.”

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Harold Turner who works as the Head of Schools at Ivy Hill Preparatory Charter School in Brooklyn, New York has had families who were directly impacted. He spoke passionately via text message using some expletives, “this shit is fucked up because it arrests folks’ sense of safety and directly interrupts a kids’ ability to function in school because while their body is present, their mind is elsewhere.”

He noted that two of his kindergarteners have shown negative responses to their parents being deported. “One is resistant to direction, and one is angry and I don’t use that word lightly.”

Diane Guerrero, actress, discussed the impact of parental deportation years ago. She notes that, while her parents were deported, the deportation of her brother and father of her niece have lasting effects, “My niece made the wrong friends and bad choices. Today, she is serving time in jail, living the reality that I act out on screen. I don’t believe her life would have turned out this way if her father and my parents had been here to guide and support her.” Referring to her character on the show Orange is the New Black, Guerrero is clear about her position on the issues, “Children who grow up separated from their families often end up in foster care, or worse, in the juvenile justice system despite having parents who love them and would like to be able to care for them.”

Over ten years after this publication, we continue to see how rash decisions like repealing TPS are affecting children. 

Pierre Damas Bel, a Haitian immigrant young man who flourished in the United States, committed suicide upon finding out he would no longer be able to go to the college he worked so hard to get into. He had an admirable work ethic. He threw himself into sports. He graduated at the top of his class at Springfield High School. He was prototypically the American Dream. Nevertheless, an ankle monitor was thrown on him unceremoniously. His scholarship was taken from him. He was treated like a violent criminal and, ultimately, ran “like a football player” in front of a truck.

He saw no viable options. Reporting showed that he reached out to teachers, co-workers, ROTC officer, and principal to write him letters of recommendation to ask the judge to avoid deportation, attesting to his character. He received the letters, but they could only do so much to reverse the decisions his university of choice made: they had to take his full ride; they could not bet on someone who may be soon deported. He wanted to show that he was “worth keeping”. He sought alternatives. He perceived none. 

This is an unfortunate example of the  potential outcomes of deportation–children, parents, individuals who were able to trade their work ethic for opportunity being told that they have no real power in this system. While Head of School Turner reported aggressive behavior, the spectrum spans from poking someone with a pencil like his kindergartener or worse.

The issue isn’t Haiti or the Dominican Republic or El Salvador. The issue is making your life somewhere with no pathway to citizenship and then being disaffected, uprooted and removed callously by a government who contributes to the problems on the ground in the country you are originally from.

Previously, decisions had to be made, as is common in Black life, between basic needs and humanity. Now, there are new decisions. Parents who have called the United States their home for decades are being deported, and they must decide whether their children will go with them or leave them behind. Unlike the parents of barrel children, who left in search of work, these parents are being forced out of the lives they have already made. Their children are being separated from their parents by a government that has decided their families cannot remain together.

Bio: Ruth Jean-Marie, philanthropist, strategist, and freelance journalist, is a Brooklyn native and daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her most recent project is the development of a coffee table book that delves into the rich tapestry of Haitian narratives. She is a Forbes Lister and an American Express Founder of Change. She is currently attending the London School of Economics in pursuit of her MSc in Media, Communication and Development. Follow her at @lesocialnomad.