For years, as the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) expanded operations throughout the U.S., executive director Nana Gyamfi oversaw the launch of a District-based policy research office, while collaborating with grassroots groups focused on statehood, police accountability, and migrant housing.
These days, from BAJI’s Brooklyn headquarters, Gyamfi stays abreast of developments in the nation’s capital, especially as President Donald J. Trump and Salvadoran President Niyeb Bukele ignore a Supreme Court ruling supporting the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father illegally deported to El Salvador.
With Trump, as recently as this week, mulling the transfer of “homegrown” prisoners to foreign correctional facilities, Gyamfi said that Black migrants, and all Black people living in the U.S. for that matter, should be worried about what’s to come.
“If we decide that it’s OK for this government to grab people and take them to black holes around the world, we put Black people and particularly Black people fighting for Black liberation in peril,” Gyamfi told The Informer.
Gyamfi expressed her concern that with Abrego Garcia’s race, and the focus on the Latino population in immigration policy matters, the majority of Black people may not appreciate the significance of this moment.
“We’ve got to understand that the real target — when they talk about getting rid of birthright citizenship, when they’re talking about grabbing people who protest and taking them to black holes, when it comes to criminalizing their existence — has always been Black people,” Gyamfi said. “Regardless of citizenship and migrant status.”
Gyamfi, a human rights and criminal defense attorney, spends much of her time carving out a space for Black migrants she said are left out of policy discussions centering Central and South American-born migrants.
With Rep. Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.), a daughter of Jamaican migrants, currently at the helm of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Gyamfi expressed hope that the CBC would aggressively advocate for Black migrants facing the threat of deportation. In the interim, she continues to interact with grassroots groups across the U.S, but particularly in the D.C. metropolitan region, what she calls an important asset in the resistance against anti-Black immigration policy.
“The DMV is an area that has a lot of Black migrants,” Gyamfi said. “Our goal is to make sure that those Black people have meetings…because we wanna make sure that Black migrants are on the right page. It’s not just about injustice. It’s about the future that we want to build, making sure Black migrants are plugging into that as well.”
A Court Battle and an Impasse
Authorities removed Abrego Garcia, a Prince George’s County resident, from the U.S. on March 15 and sent him to a Salvadoran prison, despite his receipt of a federal protection known as “withholding of removal.”
That status, which barred Abrego Garcia’s deportation, led to his release from immigration custody in 2019.
On April 1, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled the deportation illegal and ordered the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return by April 7. However, the Trump administration quickly appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Xinis’ ruling.
The administration then sought a stay from the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts granted a temporary pause, but on April 10, the high court issued a unanimous ruling reinstating Judge Xinis’s order, requiring Abrego Garcia’s immediate return. The Trump administration has since delayed action, as seen in a U.S. Justice Department court filing this weekend that confirmed Abrego Garcia detainment at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.
The filing, citing Michael G. Kozak of the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, did not outline any steps to comply with the Supreme Court’s order.
Bukele, president of El Salvador since 2019, appears equally adamant about keeping Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, though for a reason that’s sparked some confusion. “The question is preposterous,” Bukele said in the Oval Office during an April 14 meeting with Trump. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Abrego Garcia’s case has sparked growing outrage in Maryland with Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) leading the call for his safe return.
Organizers are also taking to the streets in solidarity with Abrego Garcia. Over the weekend, protesters rallied outside a Tesla dealership in Owings Mills, condemning a blatant violation of his constitutional and human rights while pledging to protest every Saturday until his safe return. Days later, on Tuesday, the Prince George’s County chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America rallied at the District Courthouse during a hearing about Abrego Garcia’s deportation and detainment.
“He is being held in torturous conditions, without contact from his family and lawyer,” organizers said in a statement. “Even Trump’s own Department of Justice admitted this was an administrative error, yet Kilmar remains in a dangerous facility in El Salvador.”
Van Hollen (D-Md.), who requested an urgent meeting with Bukele during his U.S. visit this week, traveled to El Salvador on April 16 to personally assess the situation and press Salvadoran officials for his release.
“Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia never should have been abducted and illegally deported, and the courts have made clear: the administration must bring him home, now. However, since the Trump administration appears to be ignoring these court mandates, we need to take additional action,” said Van Hollen. “My hope is to visit Kilmar and check on his well being and to hold constructive conversations with government officials around his release. We must urgently continue working to return Kilmar safely home to Maryland.”
Court documents reveal that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acknowledged Abrego Garcia’s deportation was due to an “administrative error.” But even after that admission, the agency failed to act. ICE officials have argued that Abrego Garcia poses a public safety threat and claim he is affiliated with the MS-13 gang.
His attorneys reject the allegations, noting that Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime in the U.S. or El Salvador.
The alleged gang affiliation, his lawyers argue, is based solely on hearsay from a confidential witness and the fact that Abrego Garcia was wearing a hoodie and a Chicago Bulls cap when he was taken into custody. His wife strongly denies his alleged affiliation with any gang.
In a letter to Salvadoran Ambassador Milena Mayorga, Van Hollen, who said he met with Abrego Garcia’s wife, mother, and brother, described their distress as “heartbreaking.
“As you can imagine,” Van Hollen’s letter said. “They are extremely worried about his health, safety, and continued illegal confinement, as am I.”
A West African Weighs In
Black immigrants and advocacy organizations have been warning for months about the harms that Trump’s immigration policy would inflict.
Since coming into office for the second time, Trump has aggressively pursued the removal of non-U.S. citizens, pressuring state and local cooperation on immigration enforcement, closing the southern border, and limiting humanitarian assistance.
Trump’s anti-immigration tone has affected change throughout all levels of government. A Louisiana court recently confirmed Columbia University graduate student and Gaza advocate Mahmoud Khalil as a terrorist threat and candidate for deportation. A federal judge also deemed ICE raids of places of worship as legal, while the Department of Homeland Security, also with the federal court’s blessing, officially launched a database for which people in the U.S. illegally have to register.
A D.C. resident who spoke to The Informer said it’s open season on all of those who weren’t born on U.S. soil.
“If you’re not born in this country, you’re not safe,” said the West African man, who requested anonymity. “I don’t care if you’re a citizen or resident. That’s the bottom line. Everyone’s on pins and needles. I think about it all the time.”
In the early 2010s, as President Barack Obama entered the second half of his first term, the West African man, a legal U.S. resident of 40 years, fought for his freedom from the confines of a Dorchester County, Maryland jail cell.
That’s where the West African man said that he spent six months in the queue for deportation after ICE agents pulled him over and, as had been the case with Abrego Garcia, mistakenly identified him as an immigrant without legal status. As the West African man recounted, the courts ultimately found his detainment to be the result of miscommunication between ICE and Immigration and Naturalization Services, the latter of which possessed the documentation confirming his legal status.
“I’ve been in this country for more than 40 years,” the West African man said. “I knew my papers were straight but ICE and Immigration and Naturalization Services were going back and forth about who has the right to pick up people and I got caught up in that mess”
As it relates to Abrego Garcia, the West African man didn’t exude much confidence about the father returning to his family in Prince George’s County.
“The U.S. can’t force the Salvadoran president to send that man back because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen.”
Beyond that, the West African man spoke of more nefarious dealing at hand when it comes to the U.S. and El Salvador.
“They’re not going to [listen to the Supreme Court] because of the agreement between them and the U.S.,” the West African man said in reference to Bekele’s offer of the Salvadoran super jail for the imprisonment of American inmates. “If you release one person, you open up Pandora’s Box. The Salvadoran president made it very clear. He said that man is not coming back.”
