The United States’ immigration policy, mainly as it has been enforced in the past three decades, operates through anti-Black logics of exclusion and punishment.^[4] The war on drugs and the war on crime ushered in an era of mass incarceration, solidified through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act ( “the 1994 Crime Bill”).^[5] Following the 1994 Crime Bill, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) utilized the same logics of criminalization to increase the detention and deportations of undocumented immigrants within the United States, which like its predecessor (the 1994 Crime Bill), disproportionately impacted Black people within the United States.^[6] Black migrants thus are forced to contend with anti-Blackness within the criminal justice system, while simultaneously experiencing an unjust immigration system.^[7]

Contemporary United States immigration law is based on IIRIRA, which further builds on carceral logics in the 1994 Crime Bill. Although the 1994 Crime Bill is most famously known for  driving mass incarceration,^[8] the bill also had specific provisions that targeted migrants.^[9] For example, the 1994 Crime Bill authorized $1.2 billion for border control, “criminal alien” deportations, asylum reform, and a “criminal alien” tracking center, as well as $1.8 billion to reimburse states for the incarceration of “criminal aliens.”^[10] The bill also enhanced penalties for those who failed to leave the United States after a deportation order,^[11] and expedited deportations for migrants who were not lawful permanent residents and who were convicted of aggravated felonies.^[12] The immigration law provisions incorporated within the 1994 Crime Bill highlight the intrinsic connection between the immigration system and the criminal legal system, and it further highlights the connection between anti-Black racism and the logics of exclusion utilized in immigration.^[13]

IIRIRA, passed in 1996, significantly expanded the legal immigration framework that associates criminality with non-citizens. Within the first ten years of its passing, the act was responsible for the deportation of more than 200,000 undocumented people, and tens of millions of dollars were  spent on detaining migrants through a condensed removal process and an expansion of the offenses that led to removal.^[14] While Black migrants only make up 7.2% of the non-citizen population in the United States, more than 20% of non-citizens facing deportation on criminal grounds are Black.^[15]As IIRIRA targets those who are tried and convicted of criminal offenses, Black migrants, who face the brunt of racist policing, the criminal justice system, and the immigration system, are often disproportionately impacted by these laws.^[16]

Donald Trump’s new policies shed light on an immigration system that had already penalized and subjugated migrants. The administration has even shown indifference toward Black migrants in the U.S. from countries deemed to be in crisis planning to deport nearly 500,000 Haitian migrants who were recipients of Temporary Protected Status,^[17] highlighting the vulnerability of Black migrants in this political moment. When Black migrants live in a system in which they are criminalized for both their immigration status and their race, they are particularly susceptible to the harms of both the immigration and the criminal justice systems, as demonstrated by the United States’ longstanding exclusionary immigration policies.

^[1] THE WHITE HOUSE, Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to Full Capacity (Jan. 29, 2025).

^[2] Jake Offenhartz, Immigration Agents Arrest Palestinian Activist who Helped Lead Columbia University Protests, AP NEWS  (Mar. 9, 2025 11:37 PM), https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-15014bcbb921f21a9f704d5acdcae7a8.

^[3] Nick Miroff, An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison, THE ATLANTIC (Mar. 31, 2025), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/an-administrative-error-sends-a-man-to-a-salvadoran-prison/682254/.

^[4] Karla McKanders, Immigration and Racial Justice: Enforcing the Borders of Blackness, 37 GA. ST. U. L. REV. 1139, 1159-69 (2021).

^[5] Violent Crime Control Law and Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-222, 108 Stat. 1796.

^[6] Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009.

^[7] See generally Juliana Morgan-Trostle & Kexin Zheng, The State of Black Immigrants,  NYU LAW IMMIGRATION RIGHTS CLINIC (2016), http://stateofblackimmigrants.com/assets/sobi-fullreport-jan22.pdf.

^[8] Lauren-Brooke Eisen, The 1994 Crime Bill and Beyond: How Federal Funding Shapes the Criminal Justice System, THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE (Sept. 9, 2019), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/1994-crime-bill-and-beyond-how-federal-funding-shapes-criminal-justice.

^[9] Timantha Goff et. al., Criminalizing Blackness: An Analysis of the impacts of the 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Immigration Bill on Black people and Policy Recommendations to Address the Harms Caused, MOVEMENT FOR BLACK LIVES (2022), https://m4bl.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CB_REPORT.pdf.

^[10]U.S. Dep’t of Just., Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 Fact Sheet, https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles/billfs.txt (last visited Apr. 23, 2025).​

^[11] Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796 (Sept. 13, 1994), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10824/pdf/COMPS-10824.pdf.

^[12] Id.

^[13] Karla McKanders, supra note 4.

^[14] Donald Kerwin,. From IIRIRA to Trump: Connecting the Dots to the Current US Immigration Policy Crisis, 6 J. ON MIGRATION AND HUMAN SECURITY 192, 194 (2018).

^[15] Morgan-Trostle & Zheng, supra note 7.

^[16] Id.

^[17] Mike Ludwig, Over 500k Refugees Could Face Deportation to Haiti, Which Is Gripped by Violence, TRUTHOUT (Apr. 4, 2025), https://truthout.org/articles/over-500k-refugees-could-face-deportation-to-haiti-which-is-gripped-by-violence.