Policing the Migrant “Crisis”: How U.S. Immigration Policy Criminalizes and Racializes Black Migrants at the U.S./Caribbean Border

Abstract

Borders and bordering practices reveal how migrants become racialized and divided into binaries of Us/Them, native/foreign, citizen/noncitizen, or legal/illegal. In the United States, much of this research centers around the U.S./Mexico border, and to a lesser extent the U.S./Canada border. However, less attention is paid to the watery, “third” border separating the United States from the Caribbean and Latin America. I draw on examples from Afro-descent Haitian, Cuban, Jamaican, and Dominican diasporas to show how bordering practices target and criminalize Black migrants through the rhetoric of “crisis,” “threat,” and racialized “crimmigration.” Together, the U.S./Caribbean border and the policies generated from it externalize the reach of U.S. border practices into the Caribbean. Like the U.S./Mexico border, it is a racialized space where bordering practices mediate, reinforce, and reimagine race, nation, legality, and citizenship.