Donald Trump’s announcement Monday night that he plans to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico is just the latest evidence that he plans to govern just as he’s promised. And if that’s the case, lawmakers have good reason to worry about Trump’s mass deportation plans.
Among the groups in Congress most anxious about it is the Congressional Black Caucus.
CBC members aren’t just opposed to Trump’s immigration policy; they’re uniquely concerned about how Trump’s immigration policies will hit Black communities.
On a personal level, many CBC members are related to foreign-born immigrants, so there’s particular distress. But there’s also uneasiness from their constituents.
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the first and only representative of Haitian American descent in Congress, told NOTUS that her constituents have gone into complete panic mode and have been inundating her office with calls.
“We have a lot of fear, especially in South Florida,” she said. “You have so many recipients of humanitarian parole who actually are here for valid reasons and they’re just becoming scared.”
Other CBC members told NOTUS they fear Trump’s approach to immigration policy is so extreme it could displace individuals who are actually documented. They’re also worried about how much harder Black immigrants’ social lives will be, given that Trump peddled false conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants killing and eating pets over the summer.
“No doubt in my mind that there will be immigrants of African descent that are in the crosshairs of what he’s planning on doing,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, who also co-chairs the Haiti caucus, told NOTUS.
For members like Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, the fact that the immigration conversation is so focused on the Latino community misses that Black people will also be significantly affected.
“The immigrant may be the person that’s helping you get your hair done, taking your child to school, helping you with your house, doing your taxes, helping you at the grocery store, help as your caregiver, is your mother’s caregiver,” she told NOTUS, referencing data that shows Black immigrants constituting a sizable share of health care and service industry workers. “Do you want to wake up and the next day you hear that they have been deported?”
Immigration has been at the top of Trump’s policy agenda since the early days of his first run for the presidency. On top of his promises to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump expanded migrant detention programs across the country during his first stint in the White House. In 2019, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained migrants at record-high rates. (Black detainees were also abused at disproportionate rates in these detention centers.)
On the campaign trail this year, Trump pledged to conduct the largest mass deportation program in history, regardless of cost. As recently as last week, he signaled that he’ll enlist the military to carry out his operation.
CBC members have long been clear-eyed about how immigration policies disadvantage Black immigrants, so much so that some argued that immigration should be seen as a “Black issue,” given the steady rise of immigrants in the United States’ overall Black population.
Clarke, for example, recounted to NOTUS a trip she and then-Rep. Karen Bass took to Mexico in 2018, “because there were many, many migrants of African descent that were trapped,” further illustrating what she described as “the role that racism plays in admitting individuals to the United States.”
But to the extent that Democrats can do anything to counter Trump’s immigration policy, their options are limited and only carry so much weight. CBC members are acutely aware of their limited impact.
Any congressional effort to check Trump is complicated by Republicans controlling both chambers.
“Unfortunately, we’re not in the majority, so we’re going to have to rely on the courts to sort out what’s legal and what is not,” Clarke said.
Then, if Democrats choose to challenge Trump’s policies in court — which they’ve indicated they will — that process could take months and could be derailed in a court with a Trump-appointed loyalist judge, giving Trump more leeway to fine-tune and expand his mass deportation program as he likes.
“That’s why we’re seeing more organizations trying to partner to pursue legal battles, whatever it is, to try to protect and slow down the process,” Cherfilus-McCormick said.
CBC members haven’t given up all hope. As Clarke said, “We have to use everything at our disposal.”
One of those tools is state governments.
Democratic governors in blue states have vowed to defy any of Trump’s orders, and CBC members are taking inspiration from the promised disobedience.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, for example, said she’ll instruct state police not to cooperate with Trump’s plans. Even Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was forceful. “You come for my people,” he said earlier this month, “you come through me.”
Rep. Gregory Meeks plans on engaging similar efforts in New York.
“It’s up to those local governments,” he told NOTUS. “I’ll be talking to my mayor and governor. This is going to be a tough two years. I can speak up about it. I can stand for what is right.”
Kamlager-Dove is already full steam ahead with educational programming that delves into the challenges migrants face “from all over the globe.”
On Friday, she spoke at an event with the Congressional Caucus on Global Migration, which she co-chairs.
“For folks who say, ‘You know that the Black Caucus or Black folks don’t care about this issue,’ take a screenshot, because we’re here,” she said.
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Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.