"They Don't Care If We Live or Die"
Report Publish Date: Winter 2024
The authors identified five themes in focus group interviews:
The United States’ immigration detention system is the largest in the world, and policies that criminalize immigration separate families and have negative health consequences. Yet little literature describes the public health impacts of immigration enforcement from the perspective of immigrants, refugees, and migrants.
The authors wanted to examine the harm experienced by people affected by the immigration system during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The authors conducted four focus groups with 14 participants from organizations that work with immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and those in immigration detention. The researchers interviewed the groups between August and October 2020. One group focused specifically on the experiences of Black immigrants.
"[T]he inequitable reality of the intersecting institutions immigrants navigate and the impact they have on immigrants’ health are not routinely addressed within the dominant public health literature.”
—Mienah Z. Sharif, University of Washington; Alejandra Cabral, UCLA; Héctor E. Alcalá, University of Maryland; Muna A. Hassan, University of Washington and University of Minnesota; and Bita Amani, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science
“Our findings highlight the harms from policing, criminalization, and exclusion that racialized communities face as a result of the (in)actions within the immigration system during a public health disaster including the COVID context,” the authors write.
Historically, the US immigration system (i.e., institutions, agencies, and laws) has served the goals and principles of white supremacy through its treatment of globally displaced people, and this appears to have continued through the COVID pandemic. Yet, the implications for immigrant health are not routinely addressed in mainstream public health discourse, and especially so in regard to public health disasters. This study conducted a series of focus groups with participants from social justice organizations working with immigrants, migrants, undocumented persons, refugees, persons seeking asylum, and persons detained in immigration jails to collect stories on how the immigration system undermined efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 and exacerbated health inequity within immigrant jails and across related community contexts during the pandemic.
Focus groups were conducted to explore issues related to immigrants and immigration detention during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a total of N=14 participants across the 4 focus groups with a dedicated focus group on perspectives of Black immigrants/from Black immigrant organizations only. Each focus group consisted of 3 to 4 participants. Five key themes emerged: 1) dehumanization of immigrants and migrants and devaluation of their lives; 2) inhumane conditions of confinement that propagate risk of disease; 3) denial of resources for COVID-19 prevention and mitigation; 4) expansion of intersecting oppressive systems; and 5) community-based resistance and mobilization against immigration policies and enforcement. Our findings highlight the harms from policing, criminalization, and exclusion that racialized communities face as a result of the (in)actions within the immigration system during a public health disaster including the COVID context.
Ethn Dis. 2024;34(1):8–18; doi:10.18865/ed.34.1.8
This study and report was conducted and created by the following:
