ICE Has Secretly Been Recording Inaccurate Data, Hiding Racial Disparities

The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) is calling for a Department of Justice investigation into Immigration Customs Enforcement after records revealed that it has been lying about its racial data collection practices and classifying Black immigrants as white.

For years, BAJI and other organizations have demanded that ICE collect and publish racial and ethnic data about the thousands of migrants it detains each year in order to disclose and address racial biases. The Department of Homeland Security has responded that it does not collect such data. However, information BAJI obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit reveals that immigration agencies do maintain racial and ethnic data — but inaccurately so.

BAJI said multiple ICE detention facilities classify just 50% of Gambian immigrants as Black, even though the American Community Survey suggests that 98% of people from Gambia self-identify as Black. The American Immigration Council also reported that ICE classified 86% of immigrants in custody at a New Mexico detention facility as white, even though BAJI said many of those detainees were Black immigrants from countries including Mauritania, Haiti, Senegal, and Mali.

In a statement released Tuesday, BAJI accused ICE of secretly and intentionally collecting, manipulating, and “whitewashing” race data to avoid accountability for the disparate treatment of Black immigrants.

DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection did not respond to requests for comment on BAJI’s findings and other recommendations.

BAJI and the American Immigration Council filed the FOIA lawsuit in 2021 after ICE did not respond to requests for records about its use of force, solitary confinement, and other conditions at eight different immigration detention centers across the American South.

“Immigrants are oftentimes detained in state prisons and jails in the South that have already been condemned for the horrible conditions underpinned by racial and gendered violence,” BAJI Executive Director Nana Gyamfi said in a statement to Prism. “Detention and the disappearing of Black people is a continuation and extension of this country’s slavery and mass incarceration legacy.”

BAJI’s findings come just over a month after Gyamfi spoke at a White House human rights meeting. At the meeting, she outlined racial disparities at the border and provided policy recommendations to address them, the first of which was to implement systematic race data collection.

Gyamfi claimed the Biden Administration is yet to make meaningful progress on its purported commitment to advancing racial equity, based on a BAJI report that conditions for Black migrants have gotten worse since 2022.

“The Biden Administration has used the racial equity executive order as a substitute for actually satisfying its human rights obligation to resolve racial discrimination in U.S. policies and practices,” Gyamfi said in her address.

Black migrants face “discrimination at every turn” throughout the immigration process, Gyamfi said, including anti-Black racism in Mexico and other Latin American countries, heightened danger at the border, and higher risk of detainment once across it.

“Rape, robberies, murders,” Gyamfi said. “All of that is in a much more heightened, negative, dangerous situation for Black migrants now than what they were experiencing in 2022.”

Black migrants face higher rates of detention, deportation, and denial of asylum claims, said Daniel Tse, who co-founded the Cameroon Advocacy Network and works with the Haitian Bridge Alliance and Black Immigrants Bail Fund.

Tse described his own harrowing experiences when he immigrated from Cameroon in 2017 and was detained in California. He was issued a $17,500 bond, while his Venezuelan bunkmate’s was $1,500.

“I asked, ‘What’s the difference?’” Tse said. “I submitted more supporting documents to show I’m not a flight risk, but my bond is higher than his.”

Tse attributed this to anti-Black racism that has bled into immigration policy. Black migrants, he said, receive higher standards and less compassion than other immigrants.

Rabi Filipe, a 25-year-old Angolan immigrant living in Maine, also told Prism about the disparate treatment he faced while detained in a center in Mexico in 2019. While other migrants obtained authorization to cross into the U.S., he was instead targeted by authorities for his facilitation of protests for migrant rights.

After a harrowing monthslong journey through nine Latin American countries, enduring anti-Black sentiment along the way, Filipe had spoken out about conditions at the facility. Packed cells were separated by race, he didn’t have a mattress to sleep on, and surrounding townspeople hurled racist attacks at migrants from African and Caribbean nations. Now, he felt he was being punished.

Filipe eventually fled to Texas, was held in a detention center, and then flew to Maine to pursue asylum. Now 25 years old, he struggles to support himself and his 1-year-old daughter. His work permit expired, rendering him jobless and unable to secure stable housing or pay off his climbing debt.

The challenges facing immigrants to the U.S. are heightened for Black migrants, who face disproportionate violence and discrimination, Filipe said.

This discrimination also lives in artificial intelligence. BAJI’s report called on DHS to disclose the impact of racial bias in the CBP One app, which migrants must use to schedule asylum appointments. The app’s facial recognition feature sometimes cannot register Black migrants, meaning they cannot book appointments.

“If you don’t have an appointment through the CBP app, you just stay on the other side of the border,” Gyamfi said. “The CBP app was not picking up Black faces.”

BAJI also called on the Biden Administration to end the police-to-deportation pipeline, noting that in 2022, 82% of those deported were from majority Black countries.

But even that number is likely an underestimate, Gyamfi said, because it doesn’t account for Black immigrants deported to countries that are not majority Black since ICE has failed to accurately collect or disclose comprehensive racial data.Gyamfi said thisultimately results in “hiding Black people.”

ICE’s failure to report racial data “makes it more difficult to track the abuses that are carried out along racial lines,” said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice Center.

Franzblau said more than 37,000 people are detained in immigration facilities every day, compared with 14,000 when the Biden Administration first took the helm. At these facilities, Black migrants are more likely to be placed in solitary confinement and serve lengthier detentions.

Gyamfi noted that in 2022, the government swiftly embraced Ukrainian refugees.

“They opened up a [border] lane that had been closed and laid out a red carpet…so that Ukrainians could walk into the country while everyone else was stuck at the gate,” Gyamfi said.

While Ukrainians were given Temporary Protected Status within two weeks of the Russian invasion, BAJI and other organizations fought for years to win TPS for Cameroonians. Ukrainians were offered subsidized housing and work permits, Gyamfi said, while migrants of color are crammed into detention centers with poor conditions. A lack of support and translation services makes it difficult to maintain work authorization.

Gyamfi supports welcoming Ukrainians. But true equity, she said, would mean extending the same treatment to Black migrants.

“All of the anti-Black discrimination that is experienced by African Americans…you’re now experiencing that as this new asylum seeker who has very few protections,” Gyamfi said. “When we address the needs of Black migrants, we address so many of the inequities that exist within those worlds.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.