HUMAN RIGHTS AND BLACK REFUGEE A

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier / juin 2009 -janeiro/juin 2009

HUMAN RIGHTS AND BLACK REFUGEE AND IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN A POST-9/11 ERA

Cassandra Veney

Abstract

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the U.S. government passed several laws that became a part of the “new” war on terror. What policymakers, the media, academics and American citizens paid attention to was the effort to identify, apprehend, detain, and finally deport Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Arab men in the country’s counter-terrorism efforts. In the process, these men had their human rights violated under a number of international human rights laws that the U.S. government has signed and ratified. The emphasis on these men not only leaves out other men, but it entirely ignores the effects of 9/11 policies on women. This article examines how post-9/11 policies grossly violated the human rights of African women refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and asylees along with women from the African Diaspora.

Introduction

For centuries the belief and perception that immigrants and refugees entered the United States, enjoyed liberty, and became citizens were sown into the social fabric of the country. However, the reality has been quite different. On one hand, the historical image of the “good” immigrant and refugee has been racialized and gendered to mean the European male and female. On the other hand, the “bad” immigrant has been racialized and gendered to mean the male “Mexican,” “Jap,” and “Chinaman. Unfortunately, the perception and treatment of the “bad” immigrant have remained with us into the post-9/11 era. Moreover, during the post-9/11 era the “bad” immigrant was racialized and gendered to men Arab, Muslim, South Asian, Middle Eastern and Male (Stubbs, 2003; Shiekh, 2004). Academics, the media, and ordinary Americans have paid scant attention to immigrants and refugees from Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and South American in general and to women refugees and immigrants in particular. Rather, the focus has been on the Arab, Muslim (read male) immigrant following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Following the 9/11 attacks, human rights activities and civil liberty proponents attempted to address the human rights violations experienced by both citizen and immigrant men who were suspected of being terrorists. The media, some politicians, and human rights activists were horrified after human rights violations were uncovered at Abu Ghraib nd Guantanamo By. In these two detention facilities, the victims were mainly male. By concentrating on men, we ignore how immigration, refugee, and post-9/11 policies affect the human rights of women. This article has three goals. First, it will discuss how 9/11 affected African refugee women on the continent in terms of resettlement opportunities to the United States. Second, it will discuss how policies adopted in the wake of 9/11 affected them as they attempted to enter the country to apply for asylum. Third, it will address how measures adopted after 9/11 violated the human rights of women refugees from Africa and the rights of Black women immigrants within the context of conventions and protocols that the United States ratified or was a party to.

Although this article specifically addresses policies adopted after 9/11, it is important to bear in mind that policies enacted before 9/11 had a negative effect on both legal and illegal immigrants that date back to the 1980s. For example, legislation to fight the war on crime in 1986 (The Anti-Drug Abuse Act) and immigration reform legislation passed in 1996 (The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act) served as dress rehearsals for the policies adopted after 9/11 (Morawetz, 2000; Hafetz, 1998). The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act gave the Immigration and Nationality Services (INS) agency new powers to remove immigrants and asyless from the country in what was termed expedited removals. In other words, if an immigrant or asylum seeker attempted to enter the country, the official could determine on the spot if the person could nor could not enter. The person would be immediately deported without any other official hearing his or her case such as an immigration judge (Welch, 2002).

International Human Rights Laws

The United States’ constitution, especially its fourteenth amendment with the due process and equal protection provisions, should provide the legal foundations for the protection of the rights of citizens and non-citizens, along with the eighth that protects individuals from cruel and unusual punishment; the sixth that allows individuals to have access to legal counsel and speedy trials; the first that provides religious freedom and for individuals to have habeas corpus. However, this was not the case after 9/11.

The United States is a signatory of various international instruments, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that are designed to protect the rights of everyone. The United States is a signatory of various international treaties, conventions, and protocols that cover a range of human rights. However, it is not a signatory of all of them nor has the government ratified all of them. Moreover, in the event that instruments are ratified, the government does so with various “reservations, understandings, or declarations” (RUDS) (Zeleza, 2004:9). The most important instruments that should protect the rights of individuals in the United States, whether they are citizens or non-citizens, are contained in the International Bill of Human Rights and they include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR. The United States ratified the first three, but to date has not ratified or signed the last two optional protocols. Refugees and those who seek asylum in the United States should have their rights protected under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The United States is not a signatory of the 1951 Convention, but it is obligated to uphold the provisions of the Convention because it signed and ratified the 1967 Protocol. The United States has also ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDWA) and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Human Rights Watch, 2007). Again, these can be used to uphold the human rights of citizens and non-citizens.

Post-9/11 Policies and African Women Refugees

African refugee women experienced the immediate effects of 9/11 in terms of their ability to participate in the resettlement program that was a protracted and cumbersome process before 9/11. It became even more difficult after security measures were enacted to ensure that terrorists would not enter the country. Alison Parker of Human Rights Watch (2004) further notes the difficulty of entering the country when she writes that “Instituting security checks on visa applicants may make sense for national security, but refugees who have already had their cases assessed and who are by definition, fleeing for their lives should be placed in a speedier queue because the United States has a special international obligation to protect them.” The processing of refugees in Africa came to a virtual halt for two months as refugees (some had already been cleared for admission) had to undergo additional scrutiny (Veney, 2007). This left “20,000 screened and travel-ready refugees in refugee camps and other processing locations in limbo..many for more than nine months, some indefinitely” (Gilbert and Brown, 2002: 1,3). This number included African refugee women. Because 9/11 occurred at the end of fiscal admissions year, 18,979 refugees were admitted from Africa. This was not the case in 2002 and 2003 when only 2,548 and 10,717 were admitted respectively (Veney, 2007).

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (better known as the Patriot Act passed in 2001) has adversely affected the admission of African refugee women to the United States. The Act expanded the definition of terrorist activities and the categories of terrorist organizations. This has meant that bona fide refugees were denied resettlement opportunities because they either provided or they were thought to provide material assistance to a terrorist organization. Also, the Immigration and Nationality Act “denies asylum to anyone who associated with, or provided “material support” to any armed group – even if the group is supported by the United States, and even if the individual was forced at gunpoint to provide the support” (Daskal, 2006:2). This affected women from Sudan to Liberia to Sierra Leone to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as these women were fleeing from civil wars that pitted civilians between not only government forces but between various rebel factions. And there is much evidence to support the claim that rape was used as a weapon of war in all of the above countries. In an attempt to avoid rape and other forms of sexual violence, women and girls often became the “wives” of soldiers and other combatants in order to survive, obtain food, clothes, and shelter. As part of being a “wife,” the women had to cook, clean, serve as porters, and if material support was demanded from them, they had to oblige (Veney, 2006).

This has been documented in several cases of women asylum seekers from Liberia and Sierra Leone who could have qualified for refugee status due to gender-based persecution. Some of the asylum seekers had been raped or they feared being raped. This is in direct violation of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol that should have provided these women with the opportunity to apply for asylum and admission to the United States if they proved that they had a well-founded fear of persecution and were unable and unwilling to return to their countries of origin. In other words, the government violated their human rights when this policy was enacted. The strict interpretation of the material support provision of the legislation, along with the stricter security measures resulted in a number of refugees in the pipeline for admission were not processed—they remained in refugee camps where they were often subjected to gender-based violence, in urban areas and in rural villages of host countries that increasingly wanted them to return home regardless of the security conditions in the countries of origin.

Fear of the Government and Human Rights Violations

Due to the overall anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner climate in the country after 9/11, many refugees and immigrants lived in fear of most governmental agencies including welfare agencies. However, they were aware that policies and laws adopted after 9/11 served to criminalize both the documented and undocumented. Programs and services that were available to them often were unused or underused. For African women refugees and immigrants and African descended immigrants, many of these services and assistance were vital to their survival, but yet, they were reluctant to access them because they feared being detained or deported. In addition, 9/11 has affected their ability to seek employment, maintain employment, and have access to health care, education, childcare, housing, and other benefits. Fears associated with 9/11 presented particular hardships for African and Black women refugees and immigrants who often enter the country alone, were heads of households, were not fluent in English, did not have the necessary education and work skills that enabled them to find jobs. These issues are rarely addressed in the media and by policymakers because both entities have been preoccupied with presenting both groups as “model minorities.” In other words, they were unlike those descendents of the four million slaves who were dependent on welfare, refugees to work or attend school. Most immigrants including the African and Black ones were somehow able to do that “native” Blacks could not –pull themselves up by their bootstraps and assimilate into American society. Lewis (2006:3) points this out within the context of Jamaican immigrant women when she writes “low-wage immigrant women were portrayed as a hardworking counterpoint to the image of the lazy, native-born “Welfare Queen.”” In reality, laws passed after 9/11 forced them to retreat from public assistance and services which indicates that their “model minority” status did not protect them 9/11 policies. Therefore, when immigrant and refugee women from Africa, the Caribbean, and others from the African Diaspora were deprived of medical care, food, housing, and other assistance because they feared the government, their human rights were violated under the UDHR and ICESCR.

In terms of employment, the effects on refugees and immigrants were evident immediately in the airline sector as those responsible for the terrorist attacks were able to smuggle box cutters past airline screeners – many were immigrants and refugees who were blamed for the terrorists being able to board the planes (Bacon, 2003). Many African refugees and immigrants and other immigrants from the Diaspora worked in the airline industry in various capacities including baggage and passenger screening, food service, maintenance, and janitorial work. Shortly after 9/11, the Department of Transportation (TSA) was created under the DHS and baggage and passenger handlers were required to be citizens of the United States (Bacon, 2003). This meant that thousands of refugees and immigrants including Africans and people of African descent lost their jobs. For the women who worked at the airports in any capacity, the lost of employment was devastating, especially if they were responsible for children and other family members both here and abroad. Also, women were affected when their husbands or partners who were not citizens lost their jobs after 9/11. In the anti-foreign and anti-immigrant climate of 9/11, many former airline industry employees found it difficult to obtain new employment as employers scrutinized immigration documentation to determine the validity of work authorization. Again, this is in violation of their human rights that are protected under international law—both citizens and non-citizens have the right to work according to the ICESCR. The United States signed and ratified the Covenant therefore everyone should have the right to work which includes non-citizens working as baggage and passenger screeners.

Following the implementation of harsh detention and deportation policies after 9/11, African and Black refugee and immigrant women who found themselves in abusive domestic relationships and subjected to other violence were hesitant to involve the policy and to seek safety and assistance from state and local agencies and non-profit organizations. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed by Congress in 1994 “included unprecedented provisions for immigrants who are victims of domestic violence to receive aid, shelter, and public benefits. This bill has been very effective in stimulating and funding programs to address domestic violence in immigration communities” (Pearce, 2006: 20). Furthermore, the legislation “created special routes to immigration status for certain battered noncitizens. These provisions were updated in 2000 in the Battered Immigrant Women’s Protection Act” (WomensLaw.org n.d.) However, these provisions have not always prompted immigrant and refugee women to report physical and sexual abuse and other criminal activities perpetrated against them to the police and to obtain lawful permanent residency on their own. This was because they feared that they would be deported or their domestic partner who was responsible for the battering would be deported, especially as the government appeared to make few distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants. If they were a dependent on his immigration or asylum application, they might endure the battering and forgo seeking assistance. Finally, some women feared that they would lose custody of their children if they reported the abuse to the police (Pearce, 2006).

There were other reasons besides fear of the detention and deportation that may serve to explain why some of these women remained in these abusive relationships and did not adjust their status on their own. He may have been the only one in the household who was working, had some fluency in English, had a driver’s license, was in possession of the marriage license, passports, and birth certificates of the children, and who traveled outside of the household on a regular basis. There were also practical reasons why some women did not take advantage of VAWA and the Battered Immigrant Women’s Protection Act. It was simply too complicated, timely, and expensive to obtain legal permanent residency on their own. Although the legislation covers a wide range of women and children who can quality, it appears that they will need legal assistance to determine if and under what circumstances they qualify. Finally, all of the above conditions would put a strain on a woman’s physical and mental health that the state is supposed to protect. This human right is contained in the ICESCR.

Detention, Immigrants, and Asylum Seekers

Immediately following 9/11, Arab and Muslim men (this included African men) faced human rights violations perpetrated by various governmental agencies beginning with the Patriotic Act that gave, “the government unprecedented power to detain non-citizens who are designated as terrorist threats by the Attorney General” (human rights first, 2004:18). The justice department with its new powers conducted roundups and sweeps that landed immigrants and refugees in detention. Others were subjected to secret trials and expedited removals, while others simply disappeared into prisons (Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, 2005). Human rights first (2004,21) reported “while the vast majority of these individuals were not asylum seekers, some refugees were caught up in the wave of detentions.” Clearly, this is in violation of international law and the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1968 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees—the government immediately requires asylum seekers to prove that she has a well-founded fear of persecution. If she is unable to do so, she is immediately detained or deported without taking into consideration that the person may have left her country in a hurry, did not have time to collect the proper documentation, or was simply unable to prove her case at that point, especially for African refugee women who fled because they were raped (Edgar, 2003). A study conducted by the University of California, Hasting College of Law concluded that women asylum seekers more frequently deported than men. Even those individuals who have proven their well-founded fear of persecution may be detained before they have their day in court under the new legislation. Even worse, “individuals who arrive with facially valid documents showing they are United States citizens, permanent residents, or that they have already been granted refugee status in the United States may be sent back without a fair hearing and without review solely on an immigration inspector’s suspicion that the documents they present were not genuine” (Edgar, 2003: 171).

The gender dynamics of mandatory detention deserve some discussion as “the imprisonment of legal and illegal immigrants is dramatically on the rise…in response to the 9/11 attacks” (Owen, 2004). At the same time, some asylees were given mandatory detention. Asylum seekers who arrived at ports of entry and who were given the opportunity to prove a credible fear if returned to their countries of origin were often detained for long periods of time in facilities that were similar to jails and prisons (U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2005). The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (2005:5) “found that facilities where asylum seekers are detained resemble, in every essential respect, conventional jails. Many facilities are, in fact jails and prisons, and in some of these facilities, asylum seekers sleep alongside U.S. citizen convicts serving criminal sentences or criminal aliens—even though ICE detention standards do not permit non-criminal detainees to be co-mingled with criminals.”

Hundreds of African and Black women, refugees, undocumented immigrants, and legal residents were held in detention where their human rights were violated. For many women asylum seekers, the human rights abuses started at the airports as immigration officials conducted invasive body searches, used shackles to constrain them, verbally abused them, and used other actions to threaten and intimidate them (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 2002). It was not only men who were criminalized and affected by post-9/11 policies. Many of the women asylees sought sanctuary in the United States because they had a well-founded fear of persecution because they were women—they had been raped or they feared being raped or their daughters and other female relatives had been raped or they too feared being raped. They attempted to escape Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or they did not want their daughters to under the procedure while others fled to avoid forced prostitution, marriages, and abductions. Many of them fled war-torn countries and they had physical and psychological scars characterized by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that were difficult to heal while they were held in detention (Lawyers Committee on Human Rights, 2002). The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children (2000) reported that women detainees faced the same human rights violations as men—intrusive body searches, poor food, lack of medical care, sexual abuse (women faced this more than men because they were women), physical assault, solitary confinement, verbal abuse, overcrowded conditions, and lack of privacy. These types of abuses are human rights violations that can be characterized as cruel and unusual punishment which are in violation of the ICCPR that prohibits states from engaging in these types of punishments. It is obvious that these actions undertaken by the state constitute cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment. Women detainees are separated from their children and other relatives. They are moved around the country and not given access to legal representation. All of these conditions and factors often lead to panic attacks, depression, and thoughts of suicide, and anxiety (human rights first, 2004).

In addition, according to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (2002:9), “parole for asylum seekers, already restrict in some areas of the U.S., seems to have become even more restrictive in the wake of September 11.” Many of the detainees were African men and women. The fate of these asylum seekers rested in the authority of DHS officials who interrogated them at ports of entry. Whatever decisions rendered by the DHS cannot be appealed to an immigration judge. This is in violation of human rights that are protected in the ICCP that upholds the right to liberty, security and prohibits states from engaging in arbitrary arrests and detentions. Again, in the post-9/11 era, we were led to believe that the detainees were all of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian descent and certainly all were terrorists or would-be terrorists who entered the country illegally. In reality, the detainees included Africans from a wide variety of countries that included Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Liberia, Somalia, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Egypt, Zimbabwe, and so forth. In addition, detainees of African descent included Jamaicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Guyanese, Trinidadians, Panamanians, and Brazilians.

9/11, National Security, Crime, and Deportations

As stated earlier, legislation passed in early 1996 (The Illegal Immigration Responsibility and Reform Act) that ushered in a new era for deportations included expedited removals that continued to affect African and Black women refugees and immigrants after 9/11. With the establishment of the DHS and its ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) agency, the federal government created a number of programs to apprehend, arrest, and detain individuals, and finally to remove persons who had criminal convictions and fugitives all under the guise of protecting the country’s national security. Individuals who did not have criminal convictions were also deported for immigration violations that included overstaying their visas. Between 2001 and 2005, the government deported 931,661 individuals (Dougherty et al., 2005). This has had extremely negative consequences for immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, and South America in particular. After 9/11, countries such as Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Colombia, and Brazil have witnessed large numbers of people being deported after being convicted and sentenced for criminal offenses—selling and possessing narcotics, murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, and burglary (Parker, 2007; Best, 2002).

The ICE created the Detention and Removal Operations Program to expedite the removal of criminal and non-criminal immigrants from the United States following 9/11. For example in 2005, 5,938 people were deported to Brazil; 2,929 to the Dominican Republic; 1,879 to Colombia; 1,777 to Jamaica—due to the above criminal offenses and for non-criminal offenses (Dougherty et al., 2005). The National Fugitive Operations Program established by the ICE in 2003 illustrated the government’s determination to rid the country of fugitive immigrants –“an alien who has failed to depart the United States based upon a final order of removal deportation, or exclusion; or who failed to report to the Detention and Removal Office after received notice to do so (ICE, 2007a). The program was established to “dramatically expand the agency’s effort to locate, arrest, and remove fugitives from the United States (ICE, 2007a). For example the number of fugitive aliens arrested under the program increased year after year—1,901 in 2003; 6,584 in 2004; 7,958 in 2005; 15,462 in 2006; and 30,408 in 2007 (ICE, 2007a).

Nevertheless, immigrants and refugees who were convicted of crimes had rights including human rights. Human Rights Watch (2007, 45) argues that the government violated the human rights of these individuals on several grounds such as “the right to raise defenses to deportations, the principle of proportionality, the right to family unity, and the right to protection from return to persecution.” In a 2007 report, Human Rights Watch outlined the various international human rights instruments that the U.S. government violated when it deported immigrants and refugees with criminal convictions who completed their sentences. For example, the ICCPR requires the state to allow a person who is lawfully in the country to appeal an order of deportation unless he or she is a threat to national security. This has not been the case following 9/11.

With the establishment of ICE, which is the entity that issues deportation orders, “immigration judges can do little more than run conveyer belt deportation hearings in which they rubber stamp the removal orders issues by Immigration and Customs Enforcement” (Human Rights Watch, 2007: 46). Therefore, immigrants and refugees were not given the opportunity to present a defense against their deportations. In the event that they were given a hearing before an immigration judge, “several categories of immigrants facing deportation for crimes in the United States are barred from having hearings in which their human rights can be weighed (Human Rights 2007:48). In other words, the fact that refugees and immigrants had ties to this country including children and other close relatives; they served their sentences; and refugees who were deported may risk persecution was not considered during the hearings (Human Rights Watch, 2007).

Furthermore, thousands of individuals were deported for committing non-violent crimes while others had no criminal records. As of June 2006, the ICE deported 400,000 immigrants. Of this number, 210,000 had criminal records (ICE, 2006). This meant that a large number of immigrants were deported who had not committed a violence or non-violent crime. It is also important to bear in mind that these programs targeted, apprehended, and deported both legal and undocumented immigrants. Many of the deportees lived in the country for years, married, had children, were educated in American schools, purchased property, established businesses, and community organization. They clearly had ties to the country. This has had negative effects on the person who was deported and family members who remained in the United States (Barnes, 2007). Family members, especially children were left without a parent to support them financially and emotionally. Many were taken care of by relatives, but some were placed in foster care. As a result, the children’s human rights were violated because according to the CCPR every child because he or she is a minor has the right to be protected by the state, society, or family member. When the state deports the parent, the parent cannot protect the child and there is no guarantee that if the child remains in the country that the state and society will protect him or her.

Regardless of gender, if the deportee was the main financial provider for the family the consequences of deportation can be dire. Furthermore, the ICE reduced the amount of time that an individual remained in the expedited removal process from 90 days to 19. This meant that the potential deportee and his or her family had less time to prepare for the final removal. In addition, a significant number of deportees spent most of their entire lives in the United States and if they were deported based on an aggravated felony they were permanently barred from re-entering the country (Human Rights Watch, 2007). They did not always have cultural and family ties to the country of origin; many were unable to find employment, job training, and adequate housing and medical care upon arrival to countries that were experiencing high levels of unemployment, underemployment, and economic hardship. Still, government officials and nationals from Jamaica and the Bahamas for example argued that the deportees were the main contributors to their countries’ increase in crime and insecurity.

Other program established under the ICE that affect African and African descended immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers included the Secure Borders Initiative which allowed for any immigrant who was within a hundred miles of the U.S. border to be removed without a hearing in an immigration court. This meant that individuals who had a well-founded fear of persecution who were unwilling or unable to return to their countries of origin were not allowed to remain in the country to apply for asylum. This is in violation of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol to which the United States is a signatory. The U.S. government under the Convention and Protocol was obligated to allow individuals to enter and remain in the country to apply for asylum. Another program established in 2005, Operation Community Shield, targeted immigrants from the Caribbean, South America, and Latin America. This program was aimed at violent street gangs in major urban areas of the country in an effort to deport gang members and leaders. As of 2007, 7,655 criminal arrests have been made along with 5,241 arrests for immigration violations while 55 gang members have been deported (ICE, 2007a). There was no breakdown of the numbers to determine how many were men and how many were women. However, if the bulk of them were men, it would still affect women who were their wives, partners, mothers, and other family members.

African immigrants have not been spared from deportation either. For the purpose of this article, it is important to emphasize that individuals from North Africa such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria were deported following 9/11. In addition, individuals were deported from countries associated with links to terrorist organizations or countries with sizable Muslim populations such as Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Kenya. Again, the emphasis was placed on immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia following 9/11 in terms of the government abusing their human rights. What is missing is the large number of immigrants from Africa who had their rights violated as well, including women.

Conclusion

The United States has always had a reputation for upholding human rights for both citizens and non-citizens. In reality, it has not always upheld the human rights of non-citizens, whether they were the documented or undocumented regardless of the fact that the government had ratified and signed various international instruments. Legislation passed in the late 1990s laid the foundation for the violation of individual human rights in the post-9/11 era. Hundreds of people were detained and deported before 9/11 for criminal convictions and for immigration violations, but the worst was still to come.

Following 9/11 and with the passage of new legislation and the reconfiguration of immigration duties and responsibilities, along with the creation of new federal agencies, immigrants regardless of their status came under harsher surveillance at airports and borders, on their jobs, and in their communities. Refugees who attempted to gain admission from abroad underwent stricter security measures to ensure that they did not have ties with terrorist organizations. Asylum seekers were often turned away at airports and borders without having their cases adjudicated in an immigration court. The documented and undocumented were deported in records numbers—some had criminal convictions while others did not.

The intention of this article was not to deny that these policies and legislation affected a wide range of immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees both men and women and their families in negative ways. However, its goals was to examine these policies and discuss how they affected African women and women of African descent who have been neglected in the public discourse on human rights violations, national security, and the war terrorism—all issues that need a feminist analysis if we are to craft policies that address the needs and issues that concern women refugees, immigrants, asylees, and asylum seekers.

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Biography

Cassandra Veney has a M.A. degree in African Studies from Howard University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Loyola Marymont University. She has a book titled Forced Migration in Eastern Africa: Democratization, Structural Adjustment, and Refugees (Palgrave-MacMillian, 2007), She has two co-edited books: Women’s Scholarly Publishing African Studies (Africa World Press, 2001) and Leisure in Urban Africa (Africa World Press, 2003). She has scholarly articles and book chapters on refugee women in Kenya and Tanzania, US-Africa foreign policy, and the role of the African Diaspora both historic and contemporary in African affairs.

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier / juin 2009 -janeiro/juin 2009