Why “Self-Deportation” Is The Newest Old Trick Of The State

The Department of Homeland Security’s “historic opportunity” for undocumented immigrants to leave in exchange for a free flight and  $1,000 is “a deeply misleading and unethical trick,” according to the American Immigrant Lawyers Association. But this trick isn’t new. “Self-deportation,” impacted Black and Indigenous people centuries ago.

The U.S. “assigned agency” to Indigenous tribes by financing relocation, promising land, and coercing treaties. As colonizers stole more land, they enslaved more Africans.

Enslavers customarily deported  “difficult” enslaved Black people to Caribbean plantations. With the new dilemma of emancipation, Lincoln briefly considered deporting millions of Black people to Haiti. But he couldn’t. Northern states passed “stay out” laws. Southern states had sharecropping, lynchings, and criminalization. But it was a mixed message.

The South relied on our labor, relishing that we had “nowhere else to go.” When World War I opened jobs in the north, the Great Migration began. While the U.S. made life intolerable, and there were calls for our deportation, they counted on our subordination.

Today, there are 14 million undocumented immigrants and over 41 million Black Americans. A call for self-deportation is both a warning of more direct violence and an admission of weakness. The state wants its captives oppressed. It wants us gone when we resist. To stay and resist is a threat.