These injustices are on racial lines.

There is growing acknowledgment of the risks that AI technologies — those that can “differentiate, rank, and categorize” data, behaving intelligently to think, predict, and act with some degree of autonomy — pose, especially for already marginalized people. Yet the proliferation of AI technology continues largely unchecked, including in the context of border and immigration enforcement. This undermines migrants’ human rights including, as described by the former UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, through its “xenophobic and racially discriminatory impacts…on migrants, stateless persons, refugees and other non-citizens.”

In a recent landmark thematic hearing on human mobility and structural racism at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), civil society organizations — including my own, the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law, jointly with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) — made submissions arguing that the use of border technologies by the United States in immigration enforcement exacerbates the racial discrimination and abuse that Black migrants already face in their migration journeys, including through deterrence and border externalization policies. As we argued before the Commission, it is essential that a racial justice lens shape the development of U.S. laws, policies, and practices related to border technology, to avoid intensifying the racial discrimination already at the heart of the U.S. immigration system and its harmful impacts on Black migrants.

Racism in U.S. Immigration Laws, Policies, Practices, and Enforcement

Structural racism shapes migrants’ journeys and experiences of immigration enforcement in the Americas, with particularly harmful impacts on Black migrants. As Black African migration (as well as Haitian migration) to/through South America has increased in recent years, successive states have enacted policies that impede their movement and ability to reach and seek asylum in the United States. The United States has adopted various border externalization policies that prevent migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, such as “Remain in Mexico” and Title 42, which have been found to violate the international right to asylum and the principle of non-refoulement found in the 1951 Refugee Convention; more recently, the Biden administration enacted another “asylum ban” that restricts access to the asylum process. Black migrants are often disproportionately affected by these policies. For example, in May 2022, Haitians were just 6% of the migrant population crossing the U.S.-Mexico border but represented 60% of those ordered on expulsion flights under Title 42; conversely, predominantly white Ukrainian refugees were largely given exception from Title 42 measures.

Starting in 2019, the U.S. and Mexican governments took coordinated steps that effectively externalized U.S. immigration enforcement into southern Mexico. Mexican immigration officials in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas stopped issuing the “exit permits” that had allowed them to transit north and leave Mexico through the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexico also deployed its militarized National Guard to Southern Mexico for immigration enforcement, which led to an increase in apprehending and detaining migrants without documentation. This resulted in thousands of African, Haitian, and other migrants being stranded in Tapachula, Chiapas, near the Mexico-Guatemala border. Black migrants are, due to their skin color and language, particularly visible and targeted by the National Guard and other immigration enforcement. While stuck in Mexico – as elsewhere on their journey – Black migrants face racial discrimination, violence, and other rights violations. This includes overt acts of racism and hostility by Mexican immigration officials, challenges navigating the Mexican immigration system due to bias, national origin, and language differences, and barriers in employment, housing, and education.