Just Immigration (BAJI) estimated that eighty-two percent of individuals deported in 2022 were from majority-Black countries, compared to fifty-eight percent for migrants overall.55 The data demonstrate how racism influences the criminal legal system and immigration enforcement system, which combine to unfairly impact Black immigrants through increased convictions and ultimately deportations.56 Immigration laws criminalizing noncitizens have become “a coded system that works to funnel [B]lack and Latinx immigrants from the criminal court system into Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) custody to the immigration court system, and ultimately back to their nations of birth—with very little recourse or space for adjudication.” 57 This process has been called “the prison-to-deportation pipeline.”58 As race and immigration law scholar Karla McKanders explained, “The intersection of criminal and immigration enforcement results in immigrants serving their criminal sentences, after which they are deported—in some instances—to countries where they have had little or no contact.”59 The racist foundations of immigration law have contributed to the denial of rights for many Black immigrants.60 Additionally, courts have mostly let the president, the Department of Homeland Security, and immigration judges make decisions without question, since the federal government often justifies its decisions based on national security and sovereignty (authority of the state to make its own laws and run its government the way it chooses). This idea, called “immigration exceptionalism,” lets the government avoid following normal constitutional rules for noncitizens.61 As a result, constitutional rights are unevenly applied—especially to immigrants of color. Affirmative Vision The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) envisions a multi-racial democracy where the dignity, humanity, and legal rights of Black people—regardless of citizenship or immigration status—are fully recognized and protected. LDF rejects an anti-Black and anti-immigrant vision of who belongs in the United States. In a multi-racial democracy, the law will no longer be used to deny people equal rights because of their race. Instead, the law will become a tool to advance equality and shared belonging. To make this vision a reality, the United States must confront its history and the ongoing role of citizenship and immigration laws in upholding anti-Black racism and exclusion, and it must shift to a legal system that recognizes the full personhood of all people in the United States. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS • Stop efforts to end birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment states that every child born in the United States is a citizen—this is known as birthright citizenship. At the start of his second term, President Trump issued an executive order in which he proposed ending birthright citizenship.62 Although an executive order does not have the effect of law, it can influence policymaking. Abruptly ending birthright citizenship would create a permanent underclass of noncitizen U.S.-born children who would have no home country or rights.63