“Kage’s lawyers shined light on the inconsistency in the witness statements and all sorts of racial profiling during the investigation. But the price that put it all in motion is him offering up his USA citizenship.” –Kavan Garrison, Her-story in Black (Matters), page 217
For many immigrants incarcerated in the United States, there is an underlying fear that awaits at the end of each sentence: the threat of deportation. Regardless of time served, legal status, and personal character, a return to the American community is not promised. Activists have taken to terming the process the “prison-to-deportation” pipeline, a set of actions that exist to move, primarily, Black and Latinx immigrants from criminal courts and into the Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) courts. Once there, the likelihood of deportation to one’s perceived country increases. Phoeun You, who, as a refugee from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, went through the pipeline himself once he sought refuge in the United States, described it plainly when he called it “a double punishment.”
The threat of deportation consumes the final chapters of Kevan Garrison’s novel Her-story in Black (Matters). The wrongly convicted Kage has gone back and forth with his loved ones about his life inside, has spoken on the phone yearningly for his release, and has the words and statements of lawyers who can prove his innocence. The problem? He’s from Jamaica. That single fact weighs on how law enforcement and legal institutions perceive him. Rather than deal with the possibility that they were wrong or that they racially profiled him, the officers who mistakenly arrested him default to the xenophobic position that because he’s in the United States illegally, he must be a criminal in other matters too.
Garrison writes the character Kage as politically interested. Kage cites lines from the Black Panthers, he references contemporary politicians, and he describes the exploitation of Black professional athletes as a form of modern indentured servitude. It is the result of his convictions that push him to recognize the hopelessness of his situation. He can prove his innocence, risk the lengthy trial, and suffer deportation? Or he can admit to being an illegal resident, have his sentence reduced, and endure the same punishment? Faced with the “double-punishment” he lies. He lies about carrying out the crime that sent him away. He lies and the governor commutes his sentence—on the grounds he be released to Jamaica. Kage understands that the state would rather “ignore the issues of sketchy convictions” by exiling him, and he too would rather renounce his citizenship than endure further stereotyping and racial profiling in the United States. Garrison writes Kage’s send-off with a hopeful thought: “Jamaica is a poor country so it’s not really a great deal, but it’s good enough to get him a breath of fresh air.”
Kage’s story contains an optimistic end, but the reality and threat of deportation for many more in American prisons is bleak.
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