Nations across the Caribbean have been attempting to reassure their citizens at home and in the US after misinformation spread on social media channels caused widespread panic over Donald Trump’s plans for trade tariffs and mass deportations.
Alarming stories claiming that 5,000 Jamaicans had already been given final removal orders or that more than 1 million undocumented people were on federal enforcement lists, have caused concern across the region.
But while the Trump administration and its media supporters have depicted an unprecedented and sweeping crackdown on irregular immigrants, the scale of the project remains unclear.
Jamaica’s foreign minister Kamina Johnson Smith described the suggestion that “tens of thousands of Jamaicans are set to be deported immediately and simultaneously” as “categorically false”.
“While new immigration enforcement measures will result in an increased number of Jamaicans being repatriated, there are several processes involved,” she said in a statement.
She added that Jamaica “will continue our historically close engagement with US authorities” and honour “international obligations requiring us to accept the return of our citizens who are subject to deportation … with appropriate attention to due process and human rights”.
Johnson Smith did warn, however, that the government is “particularly concerned about the potential impact of the anticipated increased return of individuals with serious criminal backgrounds”.
In St Lucia, the government has set up a taskforce to “counter potential negative effects of US policy shifts”. Announcing it, Prime Minister Philip Pierre said: “We are a very small economy. Regarding the tariffs, we are concerned about the cost of inflation on the cost of goods and services in St Lucia, particularly food. As you know we import many of our foodstuffs and other goods from the US.”
Prime minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines, also raised concerns about the impact of US policy changes, particularly about the lack of information-sharing about those to be deported.
“You may deport somebody – let’s say somebody who is in jail for burglar – you send them home, [but] all the information we have is that John Brown was serving five years for burglary, armed robbery, or whatever it is.
“We do not know the history of this person: how long that person was in the United States of America … his or her skills, educational attainment, what is his or her criminal record,” he said.
The information, Gonsalves said, is important in helping to reintegrate people into communities.
Irwin Clare, the managing director of the New York-based NGO Caribbean Immigrant Services, agreed that governments will need to know the backgrounds of any people being deported.
“A lot of folks are coming back who have overstayed their time and would have just been caught up in the system. So we also have to have some differentiation between those types of deportees as opposed to the ones who would have had criminal records and were probably even incarcerated,” he said.
Clare said that an increase in deportations will cause a lot of pain to Caribbean families, as breadwinners in the US are sent back to countries where they might struggle to find gainful employment.
Any migration crackdown is likely to impact on remittances sent from the US to families in the Caribbean, which have historically been a significant contributor to Caribbean economies. One report late last year estimated that remittances would inject $18.4bn into the region in 2024.
Marlon Hill, a Jamaican-American lawyer and past president of the Florida-based Caribbean Bar Association, said Caribbean countries need to take a proactive approach to the changes of the new administration. He said: “We need to decide: Caribbean first. We need to inform and empower ourselves and to understand what is needed to take care of our people in the region and throughout the diaspora.
“What are the options for complying with immigration laws? If you’re a permanent resident, why aren’t you a US citizen if you’re eligible? Why haven’t you applied? You could be helping your family. So in the same way that America is thinking about America first, we need to also think Caribbean first. We’re not powerless in that regard.”
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