During the week of September 25, public outrage roared over viral photos of an incident at the southern border. Border Patrol agents on horseback appeared to be slashing reins against Haitian migrants as they attempted to cross the banks of the Rio Grande River in Del Rio, Texas. While the evidence is still inconclusive that any of the migrants were struck, it is clear from the images that the migrants were distressed and feared for their lives. The horrific images are reminiscent of slavery-era violence, as the white Border Patrol agents used whips to drive back the Black migrants. 

The incident immediately called Joe Biden’s immigration policies into question. In his campaign platform, Biden promised that he would reform Trump-era policies, going so far to claim that he would put an end to the “Trump-created humanitarian crisis at our border.” His promises of a fair and humane immigration system included welcoming immigrants into our communities and offering asylum to more refugees. However, this situation at the border suggests that Biden is far from living up to his promise. 

Title 42, a part of U.S. public health code, allows the government to prevent the migration of individuals during public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. During his presidency Donald Trump used this code to expel thousands of migrants at the border without allowing them to request asylum, even though U.S. immigration law grants all persons the right to seek asylum. Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Biden, claimed that the administration would continue to use Title 42 to prevent migrants from entering the United States, which marks a clear failure to roll back the Trump administration’s immigration policies. 

Although anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric flourished during the Trump years, the continuation of some of Trump’s policies in the Biden administration suggest that a change of administration is not the remedy for solving immigration conflicts. In fact, the systematic assault against Haitian immigrants can be traced back as far as the Reagan administration. 

In the 1970s, many Haitians came to America seeking refuge from the oppressive dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. Rather than granting them refugee status, the Reagan administration classified them as “economic migrants.” Unable to achieve asylum, thousands of Haitian migrants were thrown in haphazard detention centers and jails. Reagan also instituted an interdiction program, which stopped boats full of Haitians migrants before they could reach the shore. This strategy was particularly useful for the Reagan administration because a migrant must be at the border to request asylum. Around the same time, many Cubans were fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist regime, but their reception in America was very different. The government was motivated to accept more Cuban refugees because it furthered their anti-communist agenda. But since Duvalier was an anti-communist ally, the Reagan administration excused many of his human rights abuses against Haitians. Nevertheless, nationality is not the only factor in play here. It is no coincidence that lighter-skinned Cuban migrants were welcomed much more warmly than the Black, Haitian migrants. This Reagan-era immigration policy promoted a rhetoric that associated poorer, Black migrants as “undesirables.”

Throughout the Bush and Clinton years, these policies were not subject to any significant change. Both administrations continued to deny asylum to Haitian migrants. In the 1990s, there was a Haitian immigrant crisis following a coup d'état in Haiti that resulted in a devastating military regime involving “disappearances, rape, torture, and massacres.” Bush continued Reagan’s interdiction strategy and sent Haitian migrants to a detention center in Guantanamo Bay, a camp notorious for its poor conditions and abuse. Hundreds of HIV positive migrants were forced to remain in these camps and were denied treatment in America. Duane Austin, a spokesperson for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1992, commented “We have no policy allowing people with AIDS to come enter the United States for treatment.…They’re just going to die anyway, aren’t they?”

Barack Obama did grant Temporary Protected Status to 50,000 Haitians following the devastation of the 2010 earthquake, but he simultaneously continued to deport thousands of Haitian migrants during his administration. He also contributed to a larger culture of criminalizing undocumented immigrants by overseeing the growth of ICE’s prison population. However, when Trump was elected into office, immigration policy toward Haitians took on much more potent racial undertones. In 2018, Trump referred to Haiti as a “shithole country” where people “all have AIDS.” These remarks blatantly displayed the xenophobic and racist sentiment that underscored his policies. Additionally, he revoked Temporary Protected Status to Haitian immigrants and ushered in an era of “zero tolerance” policies and extreme militarization of the border. 

While many people may defend Biden’s decision to extend Title 42 as a method to deport Haitian migrants on the grounds of public health, the history of how this country has treated Haitian migrants makes it clear that their exclusion is a targeted campaign. In fact, wealthy Western Europeans are able to travel to the United States easily using travel visas, and the government often looks the other way when they overstay these visas. On the other hand, when poor Haitian migrants attempt to escape life threatening situations, they are met with violence at the border.

Liberal or conservative, the racist legacy of immigration policy seems to seep through partisan lines. While Biden claims to end Trump’s harmful asylum policies and ensure that Border Patrol agents are held to “professional standards,” he has continued to implement the inhumane policies of his predecessors. Since Biden has entered office, the number of immigrants detained by ICE has increased by 70 percent, which disproportionately comprises immigrants of color. According to The Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Black immigrants make up 20 percent of those facing deportation on criminal grounds despite being only 7 percent of the non-citizen population. Unfortunately, the U.S. government’s long-standing financial ties to the private prison industry make the relaxation of punitive measures in immigration policy unlikely. 

Grassroots movements may be our only hope for immigration reform. As Miriam J. Wells argues in The International Migration Review, contradictory and ambiguous immigration policy on the federal level has encouraged the emergence of grassroots movements to influence the outcome of policy. For example, in the 1990s, Latino community and advocacy groups banded together in Salinas Valley, California to protest a series of arrests by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Their collaborative effort and the motivation to appease his Latino constituency pressured Congressman Sam Farr to limit INS deportations in the area. Many immigrant rights groups today are continuing this work. Black Freedom Factory, a Texas-based grassroots organization, collected and delivered thousands of supplies to Haitian migrants in Del Rio. RAICES, another Texan organization, provides legal and social services to immigrants and refugees. 

The unfortunate reality is that we cannot count on the government to treat immigrants humanely as we have seen that time and time again, even across party lines, politicians have only offered empty promises when it comes to immigration reform. Investing in those working on the frontlines of border crises and human rights abuses is a crucial first step in remedying our broken immigration system.