Deportation is not new under Trump
In November 2024, U.S. president Donald Trump announced he would deport one million people per year. His predecessor, Joseph Biden, deported 1.5 million, and Barack Obama holds the record at a staggering three million people. In March 2025, Donald Trump announced that he would mass-deport Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans starting on April 25, revoking the temporary protection that Haitians and Venezuelans previously had under U.S. immigration law.
Which communities does deportation target?
Deportations have indeed increased, and migrant communities are wary. Though it may seem like Trump cast a narrow net, he did deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia from Maryland, who had a legal right to work, to a mega-prison in El Salvador just because he was wearing Chicago Bulls gear and was thus accused of being a member of a street organization. Trump also deported three children with U.S. citizenship, including one with stage four cancer, to Honduras, where their mother is from.
Deportation regardless of law
In the first case, Kilmar has a legal right to work, and the three children have lawful U.S. citizenship—but that isn’t the point. Though there was a debate in the colonial media about whether or not the Trump administration violated “due process” or the U.S. Constitution, both of these examples make clear what Chairman Omali Yeshitela has said in many of his speeches that are on The Burning Spear TV YouTube channel—that the colonial State rules without regard to law. These laws were meant to protect the colonizer population, not the colonized. It further indicates that the deportations are aimed at colonized Africans as much as they are aimed at the Spanish-speaking Indigenous population, just like Chairman Omali Yeshitela and Dr. Wilmer Leon concluded in the video “Free Speech, Citizenship, & the Crackdown on Dissent in America” on Dr. Leon’s YouTube channel
Who is really “illegal?”
This goes back to what Chairman Omali Yeshitela said about the colonial State, or more specifically, the settler-colonial State, which the U.S. is. The deportations are of “illegals,” but we must not forget who the real “illegals” are!
The U.S. as an illegitimate settler-colonial State
The Europeans stole the continent of Turtle Island/Atzlan from the Indigenous people, who in the U.S. live in reservations which Chairman Omali Yeshitela denounces as concentration camps, and who in Mexico and Central America are on only part of their land because the U.S. stole Mexico. The U.S. made these colonial borders that keep the Indigenous people south of the border from getting back to their own land. During the talk with Dr. Wilmer Leon, Chairman Omali Yeshitela referred positively to Mexicans and other people from South of the border returning to their land as a “Reconquista.”
Deportations target all colonized people
Chairman Omali Yeshitela also reminds us how the colonial State used the immigration laws to deport Marcus Garvey so he would no longer be able to build black-led institutions that were benefiting the black community. Colonial media frames deportation as a solely “Hispanic” issue, despite the colonial State targeting Haitians.
Weaknesses of the economic system
Then, as it is now, the colonial State is afraid. Both Africans and Indigenous people make the colonial State afraid, because this is what Chairman Omali Yeshitela calls the colonial mode of production. This is the system that relies on stolen African labor on stolen Indigenous land to function, and without the stolen land and labor, the system of colonial-capitalism collapses!
What we can do
Rather than feeling powerless, we know that we can do something in response to the deportations and other attacks by the colonial State. Lawsuits can stop or stay the individual deportations, but they can only do so much to protect migrants from the colonial State. There have been many resolutions made by the Mexican people to make certain cities in the U.S. sanctuary cities, which do not cooperate with immigration authorities. The People’s Alderman Jesse Todd, who is a member of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM), made a similar resolution to make St. Louis, MO a sanctuary city, and it’s called the Dred Scott Resolution. This resolution seeks to protect community organizers by mandating non-cooperation with federal agencies, so the Uhuru Movement can continue the work of building Black Power institutions and programs that benefit the black community. As Chairman Omali Yeshitela says, the best protection is with the people, like when the black community protected the Uhuru House from a colonial police assault in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1996.
Uhuru Movement leads anti-colonial resistance
The Uhuru Movement has always stood up for the African community and its interests when the black community is threatened by the colonial State. Mass organizations of the Uhuru Movement such as InPDUM fight to protect the democratic rights of African people. The theory of African Internationalism, put forth by Chairman Omali Yeshitela, recognizes that all black people—whether in Africa, the U.S., Haiti or Jamaica—are all Africans. It recognizes that we must struggle for the total liberation of Africa and Africans under the leadership of the African working class. Africa’s liberation will enable the rest of the people of all nationalities to be free also, and under the new mode of production there will no longer be oppressed and oppressors!
Join the anti-colonial struggle!
The colonial borders must fall! If you want to ensure the safety of African and Indigenous migrants, join the struggle against colonialism! Join the Uhuru Movement!
