By Kim Kelly • Feb 5 2019

The latest development in ICE’s (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) apparent single-minded quest to become the most hated arm of a deeply unpopular government came to a head in Atlanta, Georgia during the early hours of Sunday 3 February. That’s when Grammy-nominated rapper 21 Savage (born Sha Yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph) was arrested in what ICE spokesman Bryan Cox called a “targeted operation” involving local and federal law enforcement, and placed into deportation proceedings in federal immigration court.

ICE alleges that the 26-year-old known as 21 Savage is a British citizen who entered the US legally in July 2005, when he was 12 years old, and then overstayed his visa. It essentially places him on the same level as the DREAMERs who arrived in the US as children, are being punished by this administration for circumstances they could not control, and are still fighting for the right to stay.

The rapper’s actual birthplace remains unconfirmed, with an unverified birth certificate citing the UK but fans online insisting that he hails from Dominica, an island in the Caribbean (he has mentioned in interviews that his mother, Heather, is of Dominica descent). If he was born in Dominica — a former British colony — then this entire episode is all the more shameful, given the UK’s current plans to forcibly repatriate dozens of Jamaican immigrants, which will include people who came to the UK as children and those who have British children. This cruel, needless deportation scheme echoes the 2017 Windrush scandal, which saw dozens of British citizens wrongly detained, denied legal rights, and deported to various Caribbean nations, and underlines the existential threat that faces so many immigrants of colour, especially those who are part of a greater diaspora.

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